New papers on microbiology of the built environment, February 14, 2016

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here is a new post expressing my love for everything microbial and built. Based on real science and yes, there is chocolate. The great indoors Indoor microbial communities: Influence on asthma severity in atopic and nonatopic children – Karen C. Dannemiller – The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology ($$) We sought …

Bacterial communities on plants grown indoors

We recently published a paper (http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/4/e01564-14) reporting that plants grown indoors have different leaf-surface (phyllosphere) bacterial communities than those grown outdoors. We found that Romaine lettuce grown in environmental chambers contains 10- to 100-fold lower numbers of bacteria than age-matched, field-grown lettuce. The bacterial diversity on laboratory-grown lettuce plants was also significantly lower and contained …