While not directly related to microbiology, this story about house dust caught my eye. The title of the press release really says it all, “House dust spurs growth of fat cells in lab tests”. Looks like the probable guilty compounds are man-made things like fire retardants but there’s certainly a possibility for microbially produced volatiles …
Microbes in the house and office A survey of xerophilic Aspergillus from indoor environment, including descriptions of two new section Aspergillus species producing eurotium-like sexual states – Cobus M. Visagie – MycoKeys (OA) Xerophilic fungi grow at low water activity or low equilibrium relative humidity and are an important part of the indoor fungal …
Microbes in the house Fungal and bacterial growth in floor dust at elevated relative humidity levels — Karen C. Dannemiller — Indoor Air ($6 to rent, $38 to own) Under sustained, elevated building moisture conditions, bacterial and fungal growth occurs. The goal of this study was to characterize microbial growth in floor dust at variable …
So as a general rule I don’t like to pick on published papers… mostly I prefer to pick on news stories, particularly of the germaphobic variety. That being said, occasionally I see a paper that just makes me think “why is that published?”. One of my interests is the topic of antimicrobials and antibiotic resistance …
Hypoallergenic pets no more! In a recent article (2013) from PNAS, researchers have found that mice exposed to dust collected from households that had dogs compared to dust collected from households with no pets had significantly lower lung Th2 cytokine mRNA expression levels (IL-4 and IL-13) compared with those treated with dust from no pet houses. …