All we are is dust mites (and their microbiomes) in the wind

There is a new genome paper out that should be of interest to many thinking about the built environment, microbes and allergens and related topics: The draft genome, transcriptome, and microbiome of Dermatophagoides farinae reveal a broad spectrum of dust mite allergens.  Published as an open access paper (yay) in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology …

Nice Primer on “Conducting a Microbiome Study”

For those interested in conducting “microbiome” type studies where DNA sequencing is used to characterize and compare microbial communities this could be uf use: Conducting a Microbiome Study by Julia K. Goodrich, Sara C. Di Rienzi, Angela C. Poole, Omry Koren, William A. Walters, J. Gregory Caporaso, Rob Knight, and Ruth E. Ley.  It is a good overview …

Microbiome of the NICU Resembles that of Premature Infants

We know that human babies born through vaginal birth are colonized by their mother’s microbes but what about the case of premature infants? A paper published by Jill Banfield and colleagues as part of a Sloan-funded project investigates the connection between microbial communities of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and those of the premature infant gut. Premature infants …