Development of antibiotic resistance under simulated microgravity

So just a quick post about this new paper “Evaluation of Acquired Antibiotic Resistance in Escherichia coli Exposed to Long-Term Low-Shear Modeled Microgravity and Background Antibiotic Exposure“.   Seems pretty straightforward… 1000 generations of E. coli in simulated microgravity… expose them to antibiotics and study the development of resistance.   This is in contrast to some previous …

Paper of interest: Predicting antibiotic resistance from full genome sequences 

This preprint seems like it may be of interest to folks: Precise prediction of antibiotic resistance in Escherichia coli from full genome sequences | bioRxiv Basically, the authors showed that, using a machine learning approach, they can quite accurately predict antibiotic resistance in E. coli from whole genome data. The emergence of microbial antibiotic resistance …

Acquired Resistance to Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation

By Amanda Makowiecki Miller Research Group University of Colorado, Boulder With drug resistant bacteria becoming a growing problem, alternative methods are being pursued to decontaminate air and surfaces; ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) is one of these methods. UVGI uses short wavelength light in order to disrupt the genetic material of microorganisms, this disruption either kills …

More on living buildings / materials

There are a bunch of stories out in relation to work from MIT on “Living Materials” See MIT News Engineers design ‘living materials’ Value Walk MIT Scientists Develop Living Materials Using 3-D Images Of Bacteria Gizmodo MIT’s Living E. Coli Materials Could Provide Self-Aware Surfaces The Register RISE of the LIVING CHAIR: Boffins recruit E coli to build futuristic …

Antibiotic Effectiveness in Space Project

It’s becoming increasingly well-established that microbes behave differently in microgravity than on Earth… that’s one of the justifications for our own Project MERCCURI.   Some previous work has focused on the ability of microbes to survive higher-than-normal levels of antibiotics when grown in space, though the mechanism for this is not at all understood. This article …

Construction of new roads aids dispersal of antibiotic resistant bacteria

This story isn’t so much about the microbiology of the built environment… it’s more about the effect of the built environment on microbiology. A group of researchers from various institutions recently examined the effects of new road construction on the dispersal of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (E. coli in this case).  While perhaps not surprising that the …