New papers on microbiology of the built environment, June 24, 2016

Microbes and citizen science Video: Citizen Science and Mapping the Microbiome – Eric J. Topol interviews Jessica Richman – Medscape (OA) In this One-on-One, Medscape editor-in-chief Eric Topol talks with Jessica Richman about the value of citizen science as well as her company, uBiome, which provides microbiome analyses to consumers and plans to begin providing …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, June 6, 2016

Microbes and the city The Metagenomics and Metadesign of the Subways and Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) International Consortium inaugural meeting report – The MetaSUB International Consortium – Microbiome (OA) Also see posts here and here. The Metagenomics and Metadesign of the Subways and Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) International Consortium is a novel, interdisciplinary initiative comprised of experts …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, March 3, 2016

New papers about microbes in houses, food, and waste or polluted sites.   Microbes in the house Environmental Contamination in Households of Patients with Recurrent Clostridium difficile Infection – Megan K. Shaughnessy – Applied and Environmental Microbiology ($$) Households of R-CDI subjects in the peri-FMT period, and of geographically and age-matched controls, were analyzed for …

Burger Bugs

I was clicking around news stories and found this Huffington Post article called “How Much Bacteria is In Your Burger?” Here’s what they report: “…every sample of ground beef collected by researchers from supermarkets around the country contained enterococcus and/or nontoxin-producing E. coli, which indicate fecal contamination. In other words, all the beef had poop …

High levels of Staphylococcus contamination in US meat & poultry #microBEnet

Many news sources are reporting on a new study regarding levels of Staphylococcus in meat: (e.g., see Bacteria seen in nearly half of U.S. meat – CNN.com,  Study Warns of Tainted Meat, and Almost half of meat in stores may have drug-resistant bacteria). The study, by Lance Price, Paul Keim, and colleagues from TGen reports that …