While not directly related to microbiology, this story about house dust caught my eye. The title of the press release really says it all, “House dust spurs growth of fat cells in lab tests”. Looks like the probable guilty compounds are man-made things like fire retardants but there’s certainly a possibility for microbially produced volatiles …
Microbes and money Dirty Money: A Matter of Bacterial Survival, Adherence, and Toxicity – Frank Vriesekoop – Microorganisms (OA) In this study we report the underlying reasons to why bacteria are present on banknotes and coins. (…) We treated the various currencies used in this study as microcosms, and the bacterial loading from human hands as …
Microbes on shoes Review: Shoe soles as a potential vector for pathogen transmission: A systematic review – Tasnuva Rashid – Journal of Applied Microbiology (OA) Shoe soles are possible vectors for infectious diseases. Although studies have been performed to assess the prevalence of infectious pathogens on shoe soles and decontamination techniques, no systematic review has …
There is a new paper out in Frontiers in Microbiology by fungal geneticist Joan Bennett that is fascinating: Frontiers | Silver linings: a personal memoir about Hurricane Katrina and fungal volatile. Here is how it starts: In August 2005 I was about to start a sabbatical leave during which I planned to work on the annotation …