Part of our ongoing mission is to get people to look beyond pathogens, to consider the microbiome as a whole (indoors or human), and to not assume all microbes are evil. I was particularly struck yesterday by an article on a “water-less shower” product being hyped on SmartPlanet. Especially this quote: “Though some of you …
Very useful review paper came out this week discussing the microbiology of asthma. Thanks to David Thaler for pointing this one out. The review discusses the role of microbes in both the development and prevention of asthma. While not explicitly concerned with the built environment, the “hygiene hypothesis” has obvious implications for the indoor microbiome.
Job posting regarding multiple post-doc positions in a multi-discliplnary project managed by the University of California Berkeley (UCB), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and the National University of Singapore (NUS): Up to four postdoctoral scholar appointments are available for a joint new research program between the University of California Berkeley (UCB), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and …
Another just-approved project in the built environment. This project led by Noah Fierer (CU Boulder), Shelly Miller (CU Boulder) and Rob Dunn (North Carolina State) will look at the factors structuring bacterial and fungal diversity in 1,000 homes across the United States. We propose the first continental-scale study testing how and why house-associated microbial communities …
The Sloan Foundation today announced funding for a pilot study looking at the effects of weatherization on the indoor airborne microbiome. This work will be performed by Largus Angenent at Cornell University. The full summary of the project is below: The U.S. Department of Energy has instituted a weatherization program aimed at making homes more …
The session at the ASM 2012 meeting on “The Great Indoors” seems to have gone well. I will be writing up a more detailed report but here is a quick summary done via “Storify”. ———————– UPDATE February 2019 Storify is no longer in existence. Fortunately we were able to convert the Storify summary …
Interesting video from ASM Live about a project sampling for microbes in hotel rooms. Featuring Katie Kirsch from the University of Houston and Jonathan Eisen from UC Davis.
The American Society for Microbiology meeting is starting tomorrow and there are multiple things related to microbiology of the built environment there. These include a session that was organized by Brendan Bohannan which I am chairing. The detail of the session are below: Session Title: The Great Indoors: Recent Advances in the Ecology of Built Environments …
The Sloan Foundation review process for proposals dealing with the microbiology of the built environment deadline has been extended from June 15th until the first week of July. Full text below: Dear Colleague − Due to the large number of submissions in response to the March 27, 2012 call for letters of intent, the …
Short post here about an upcoming study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University (in collaboration with Delta Airlines). They are going to examine microbes in the air on commercial aviation flights, as well as sample a number of surfaces on the plane. They’re going to correlate this microbial diversity data …