Just a quick post here that our paper just came out, “Draft Genome Sequences of Bacillus glennii V44-8, Bacillus saganii V47-23a, Bacillus sp. Strain V59.32b, Bacillus sp. Strain MER_TA_151, and Paenibacillus sp. Strain MER_111, Isolated from Cleanrooms Where the Viking and Mars Exploration Rover Spacecraft Were Assembled“. This describes the genomes of a couple new …
This is a meeting report from the 2019 “3rd COSPAR Meeting to Address Planetary Protection Knowledge Gaps for Human Missions and Working Meeting on Microbial and Human Health Monitoring”. As much as NASA loves acronyms, I can see why no one liked the idea of the “COSPAR-MAPPKGHMWMMHHM 2019” name. Speaking of acronyms… COSPAR stand for …
Just got pointed to this really awesome sounding job posting at NASA. Text below: Job Description Bioinformatics Scientist – 1079705 The Microbiology Laboratory at the NASA Johnson Space Center is seeking a highly motivated individual to fill a bioinformatics research position. The goal of the laboratory is to mitigate microbial risk to crew health, …
So just a quick post about this new paper “Evaluation of Acquired Antibiotic Resistance in Escherichia coli Exposed to Long-Term Low-Shear Modeled Microgravity and Background Antibiotic Exposure“. Seems pretty straightforward… 1000 generations of E. coli in simulated microgravity… expose them to antibiotics and study the development of resistance. This is in contrast to some previous …
Really exciting sounding postdoc opportunity with Parag Vaishampayan at JPL, “Metagenomics approach for genetic inventory of microbes to identify, document, and archive broadest spectrum of potential terrestrial contaminants during the spacecraft assembly process“. Plus I have to say that is the coolest looking recruitment banner that I’ve ever seen in my life. Job posting here. …
(This is a guest blog post, written by Madhan Tirumalai and George Fox, authors of the publication) Comparative genomics help identify novel genes of radiation resistant spore producing Bacillus sp. from Spacecraft assembly facilities Madhan R Tirumalai and George E. Fox Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, USA. The …
Sometimes when a paper has many authors and drags on for years the resulting manuscript end up with a bit of a stitched together feel. And in this world of post-peer-review-by-socia-media it’s easy to hear about the flaws after the fact. Our recently published “A microbial survey of the International Space Station (ISS)” had some …
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 …
Just a mini post here. Got pointed to this press release of possible interest on a collaboration to study microbes on the space station and on other spacecrafts using single cell approaches: Source: NASA, Bigelow Laboratory Study Microbes on Spacecrafts – Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
In parallel to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation offer of two postdoctoral fellowships to study the microbiology of the ISS, NASA is also issuing a pair of postdoc fellowships on their end. The collaboration between Sloan and NASA is great to see, since there is significant overlap between their interests in this field. I’m really …