(This blog post was prepared by students enrolled in the Koala Poop Microbiome Class in the Fall of 2016 at UC Davis) The goal of this week was to isolate a single bacterial colony for further study. This week we observed bacterial growth from our koala poop samples. With a partner, we obtained and observed …
Andrew Moeller gave a talk at UC Davis Tuesday on “The evolution of the human gut microbiome”. He is a post doc at UC Berkeley working in the Nachman lab. I did not have a working computer so – gasp – I took notes with paper and pen. The talk was quite interesting and I thought …
Well, I am truly speechless about this. Katie Dahlhausen, a graduate student in my lab, pointed me to this last week SQUIX | Innovative Germ Fighting Products and I have been wondering what I could possibly say about it. So I think I am just going to not write anything else but I will post …
OK so I love Komodo dragons. I love microbes and microbiomes. And I am an editor at mSystems. So yes I am biased in all sorts of ways about this paper. So with that caveat – I think this is definitely worth a look: The Oral and Skin Microbiomes of Captive Komodo Dragons Are Significantly Shared …
Definitely worth checking this out. NIST is running a meeting on Standards for Microbiome Measurements From the site: This workshop will seek input on defining reference materials, reference data and reference methods for human microbiome community measurements. This workshop is sponsored by NIST and NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Human Microbiome …
So I just saw this Tweet @BioMickWatson can’t find paper I’m thinking of, but OTU calling software/algorithm matters a lot – David Baltrus (@surt_lab) August 6, 2016 So I went to Mick Watson’s site and saw this: This is my attempt to collate the literature on how easy it is to introduce bias into microbiome …
So there is this new paper out in the New England Journal of Medicine: Innate Immunity and Asthma Risk in Amish and Hutterite Farm Children – NEJM It is quite interesting and is getting a bunch of press including Barnyard Dust Offers a Clue to Stopping Asthma in Children Amish kids help scientists understand why …
Professor Aubrey Tauer of City University of New York, LaGuardia Community College is running an crowdfunding campaign to support research conducted by her non-profit organization to better understand how sea turtle microbiomes vary in captivity and in wild populations. I asked her to write up something for microBEnet about the project. The campaign ends next week, so check it out …
Two reviews came out recently by Mutius et al and Smits et al discussing the link between microbes and asthma. Sadly, they are not open access. Both reviews suggest that exposure to microbially rich environments helps build the immune response and inflammation systems. The Mutius et al paper drew from research conducted on urban environmental microbiology using DNA fingerprinting to characterize indoor …
We’ve written about Joana Ricou before on this blog, and here she is again. This time with an exhibit featuring oil paintings representing human bodies and their microbiomes. The linked article also includes a video of Ricou discussing her work, which has been featured on the cover of a scientific journal and strives to combine science and art in …