Meeting Report: Sloan Conference on the Microbiology of the Built Environment (May 22-24th 2013)

This meeting is an annual gathering to bring together all of the Sloan grantees, their labs, and other stakeholders in the field to discuss the status of the microbiology of the built environment program.   Thanks again to Mark Hernandez and Alina Handorean for all their hard work in putting it together.  Note that I will …

Project MERCURRI encounters the Shoe Fairy #microbes #spacemicrobes #microBEnet

Well, I did not know there was a shoe fairy out there but apparently there is.  See this post Philly Shoe Fairy: Shoe Science! where the Philly Shoe Fairy discusses participating in our Project MERCURRI.  This type of response is exactly why we love the idea of partnering with Darlene Cavalier, the Science Cheerleader, because she has …

“Mapping the Great Indoors”, New York Times article about the microbiology of the built environment

A great article in the NYT today about the microbiology of the built environment ranging from pillowcases to hospitals to asthma.   Includes interviews with Noah Fierer, Rob Dunn, Paula Olsiewski, Jessica Green, Jordan Peccia, and Jack Gilbert. A good link for sending to family and friends that ask “what are you working on again?”

Meeting Report: ASM 2013 in Denver, Day 2/3

Day 2: Started off the day with the “Microbes in Action! Dynamics of Single Cells to Communities” which included some great talks by Greg Caporaso, Sarah Cobey, Mary Lidstrom, Trina McMahon, and Jeff Gore. The afternoon was a tough call between “Microbiology’s Next Top Model: Predicting the Future with Math and Microbes” organized by Jack …

Meeting Report: ASM 2013 in Denver, Day 1

The first day at ASM was amazing.   Started off the morning by attending the “Putting ‘Omics to the Test” session which contained talks by Ed DeLong, David Stahl, Nicole Dubilier, Julia Vorholt, and Thomas Shenk.  The overall theme of this session was to look at example where ‘omics data (genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, etc.) data was …

Another reference genome for microbiology of the built environment studies: Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens

Another genome report from our microBEnet project on generating reference genomes for microbes from the built environment is out: Draft Genome Sequence of Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens Strain UCD-AKU (Phylum Actinobacteria). From the paper: Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens strain UCD-AKU was isolated from a residential carpet in Davis, California, as part of a project to produce reference genomes for microorganisms …