Our #ISS Microbiome Paper in PeerJ

So a number of years ago our lab embarked on Project MERCCURI (let’s not talk about the tortured acronym).  This complex and citizen science-based collaboration (website here) has been a fascinating journey.  It’s ranged from getting to watch a rocket launch in Florida, to discovering/describing a new bacterial species, to our most recent publication… the …

Lessons Learned from Building an Interdisciplinary Scientific Community in the Online Sphere

The Microbiology of the Built Environment Network (http://microBE.net – this website) has made it into the community page at PLoS Biology! Our article has been in the works for some time, and we’re now pleased to announce its official publication: Bik HM, Coil DA, Eisen JA (2014) microBEnet: Lessons Learned from Building an Interdisciplinary Scientific Community …

Not-So-Clean Rooms

In researching previous studies conducted on microbes in space for Project MERCURRI, I ran across an interesting microbiology diversity study done on European Spacecraft-Associated (ESA) clean rooms in the Herschel Space Observatory. Historically, clean rooms are supposedly “sterile” environments that are used for the building and maintenance of spacecrafts, as directed by the UN’s Outer Space planetary …