“Life in the “Plastisphere”: Microbial Communities on Plastic Marine Debris”

Giant piles of plastic floating in the ocean might not be what most people think of when they hear the phrase “built environment”… but hey, we built it! Turns out that this “plastisphere” has it’s own microbiome, distinct from the seawater around it.  Not surprisingly of course, but cool that someone is looking.   Abstract below, …

New Project in the Microbiology of the Built Environment: Jordan Peccia

The next of the new Sloan foundation funded projects in the field is being undertaken by Jordan Peccia at Yale University and is entitled “Qualitative Building Moisture Characteristics and Microbial Diversity” Project description below: There exists a significant gap in our understanding of how the building environment mediates human exposure to bacterial and fungal diversity. …

Open Science Training Initiative: Graduate Training in Open Science

At microBEnet we aim to promote both the microbiology of the built environment as well as openness in all forms of research. Quick post here to highlight the Open Science Trailing Initiative (OSTI) which aims to actually instruct graduate students and postdocs in conducting and disseminating open science. …an educational scheme which aims to drive …

New Project in Microbiology of the Built Environment: Kyle Bibby

The Sloan Program in the Microbiology of the Built Environment awarded a few new grants this spring.   The first of these was to Kyle Bibby at the University of Pittsburgh called “Microbial Ecology Dynamics of Hospital Premise Plumbing Following the Introduction of an On-Site Monochloramine Disinfection System”.  The project is being conducted in collaboration with …

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 …

“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 …