Found: “most toxic” metabolite from a very common indoor fungus

A just-published article by Desroches et al, “Extrolites of Wallemia sebi, a very common fungus in the built environment,”in the journal Indoor Air describes a previously unidentified metabolite of Wallemia sebi , a very common fungus in houses worldwide, although relatively more common in north temperate climates. The authors (including David Miller) write that it …

Interesting Findings about Drinking Water

Though our water undergoes many steps to become drinkable, there are many microbes that remain and have the potential to cause disease. A December study conducted in China aimed to determine the microbial compositions of water before and after treatment.  This study was unique because it also sought to find the difference in microbial functions …

Studying – not wantonly killing – the microbes around us and the rise of the “microbiology of the built environment”

Imagine you have a camera with a special “anti-macro” lens.  This lens scrubs from any image all plants and animals and other “macro” organisms.  And this lens also highlights  the remaining living things – the microorganisms – anywhere in the frame (including those that were in or on the macro organisms removed from the image). …

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 …

The Microbial Tenants Below Your House

Maria Nunez and Hugo Hammer recently conducted a study of Scandinavian house foundations, with the goal of investigating the microbes that take advantage of the often moist conditions found in below-grade structures. The study identified five below-grade “specialist taxa” that were commonly found across all sample sites and analysed the relative ecological preferences of each. …

Hospital Water May Not be as Safe as You Think

Researchers in Italy have found abnormally high levels of infectious microbes in the water from faucets at two hospitals compared to water coming in from the deeper areas of the pipes. One of the reasons is that the water is not meeting the chlorine or temperature requirement needed to eliminate harmful pathogens, such as Acinetobacter …

Wanted – suggestions for alternatives to Mendeley (socially aware reference collections)

So – my microBEnet project has spent a lot of time working on this reference collection that we have currently in Mendeley. Microbiology of the Built Environment | Mendeley Group. In addition to just collecting these 700+ papers we have also added our own tags to the references in regard to the types of environments …