“Superbug” Candida auris fungus emerging in U.S. hospitals

Quick post here just to alert people to this story about a drug resistant Candida auris fungus variety showing up more and more. Of relevance to the microbiology of the built environment crowd is the following quote: The fungus can be passed between people or through the environment from such things as hospital equipment, says Dr. Tom …

Kristen DeAngelis slides for “Microbial Diversity” Course

My course slides are updated for 2017 with a new lecture on acellular life. Lecture 01 (3-21-2017) slides from Kristen DeAngelis Lec02 phylogeny (3-23-2017) from Kristen DeAngelis Lecture 03 (3-28-2017) slides from Kristen DeAngelis Lecture 20 (4-20-2017) slides from Kristen DeAngelis Lecture 22 (4-27-2017) slides from Kristen DeAngelis   Lecture 23 (5-2-2017) acellular life slides …

This is calling out for a large microbiome study: Salt from icy roads is contaminating North America’s lakes

It seems to me that this is calling out for some large scale comparative microbial community study: Salt from icy roads is contaminating North America’s lakes – The Washington Post Basically, there is evidence that lakes throughout North America have seen a big increase in salt levels connected to salt used to try and deal …

NASA. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award Fellowships to Study ISS Microbes 

Of interest: Source: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award Fellowships to Study ISS Microbes | NASA Fellow: Melissa Dsouza, University of Auckland, New Zealand PI-Advisor: Kasthuri Venkateswaran, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Investigating mechanisms for the acquisition and prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes in the ISS cultivable microbiome. Awarded by the NASA Space Biology Program. Fellow: Michael Lee, University of …

Your help is wanted in this #CitizenMicrobiology project: “BashTheBug – Help us fight antibiotic resistance!”

Just found out about this new Citizen Microbiology project via Andrew Su on Twitter who retweeted a post of Jennifer Gardy’s A neat citizen science project launched today as part of the big TB sequencing consortium -help spot drug resistance https://t.co/rFHsrmdBJk — Jennifer Gardy (@jennifergardy) April 7, 2017 Source: BashTheBug – Help us fight antibiotic resistance! …

Research Topic: MALDI-TOF MS Application in Microbial Ecology Studies

About this Research Topic Recent advancements in high-throughput sequencing, proteomics, metabolomics and bioinformatics has revolutionized the microbial ecology research, and immensely improved our understanding of the microbiome. Metagenomics and other cultivation-independent studies have showed that hundreds of millions of microorganisms populate various ecosystems of the earth, and the majority of these have not yet been …

Are ‘germ-zapping’ robots useful in fighting hospital acquired infections?

Well, I confess, I am still a bit skeptical of the utility of the “germ fighting robots” of various kinds that keep getting promoted as being useful at various health care facilities. There was a story published today in our local major paper – the Sacramento Bee that discusses this topic. Germs that cause hospital-acquired infections …