Just found a very interesting, very detailed article about keeping space robots / vehicles clean in terms of microbes: RYOT News » Scientists building robots focused on not contaminating Mars. The article reports: The decontamination of spacecraft, an obscure arm of space science, has grown in importance as NASA turned its attention to places such as …
New COVID Preprint out from BioBE: Preprint Link: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-940891/v1 We recruited 11 participants that were diagnosed with COVID-19 and studied each for 3 days in a controlled chamber with multiple independent variables. We collected more than 2500 biological samples, particulates, and CO2 in near field (1.2 m) and far field (3.5 m) per each trial. Each …
Back in September we posted a call for help with our “comprehensive” database of publications resulting from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation program in the Microbiology of the Built Environment. We’ve tried database scanning, begging people for help, public posting, manually digging through Google Scholar, grant reports, etc. Our hope is to use this collection …
This may be of interest to people out there. Source: KatharoSeq Enables High-Throughput Microbiome Analysis from Low-Biomass Samples | mSystems Abstract: Microbiome analyses of low-biomass samples are challenging because of contamination and inefficiencies, leading many investigators to employ low-throughput methods with minimal controls. We developed a new automated protocol, KatharoSeq (from the Greek katharos [clean]), …
The third and final day started with a Keynote talk by Marc Edwards about “MoBE, Public Health and the Flint Water Crisis”. It’s really hard to sum up this talk, I would recommend watching the video if interested. Marc talked about the Flint crisis from their perspective, starting with their pre-existing work on corrosion and …
So one of my projects for the last few months has been to try to create a collection of every peer-reviewed publication that resulted from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation program of the Microbiology of the Built Environment. The program has been running for over 10 years and has funded over 100 grants. To generate …
Came across this study today “Airborne Pathogens inside Automobiles for Domestic Use: Assessing In-Car Air Decontamination Devices Using Staphylococcus aureus as the Challenge Bacterium”. What struck me from the start was the Abstract which begins: Family cars represent ∼74% of the yearly global output of motorized vehicles. With a life expectancy of ∼8 decades in …
Microbes indoors DNA metabarcoding to assess indoor fungal communities: Electrostatic dust collectors and Illumina sequencing – Steffi Rocchi – Journal of Microbiological Methods ($39.95) Our study aimed to evaluate metabarcoding and bioinformatic analysis resulting from calibrated samples and samples collected by an electrostatic dust collector (EDC) in dwellings with no moisture problems. Thus, the fungal communities of …
I am compiling information about presentations related to MoBE topics at the ASM Microbe 2017 meeting. This may be useful to those attending the meeting in selecting where to go and also to those outside who might be interested presentations on MoBE topics at this meeting. If anyone knows of others, please let me know. …
Metagenomics approach for genetic inventory of microbes to identify, quantify, document, and archive broadest spectrum of potential terrestrial contaminants during the spacecraft assembly process. The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) provides early-career and more senior scientists the opportunity to share in NASA’s mission, to reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we …