Story Behind the Paper: Draft genomes from JPL spacecraft… assembled by undergraduates

Just a quick post here that our paper just came out, “Draft Genome Sequences of Bacillus glennii V44-8, Bacillus saganii V47-23a, Bacillus sp. Strain V59.32b, Bacillus sp. Strain MER_TA_151, and Paenibacillus sp. Strain MER_111, Isolated from Cleanrooms Where the Viking and Mars Exploration Rover Spacecraft Were Assembled“.  This describes the genomes of a couple new …

A microbial sequencing discussion course built around a paper and a blog post

So – just a quick post for now.  More details to come.  But I wanted to get a little bit about this out there. For a few years I have been teaching a mid-level course at UC Davis on “DNA sequencing based studies of microbial diversity’.  The course has evolved over the years from a …

Worth a look: new paper on “The application of project-based learning in bioinformatics training”

  This new paper in PLOS Computational. Biology may be of interest: : The application of project-based learning in bioinformatics training by Emery LR and Morgan SL. Although many out there may already be doing projects based learning for bioinformatics, many others are not.  This paper discusses how the authors added a projects component to an existing course …

An interesting idea – “The Genomics Education Alliance”

Just got an email pointing me to this White Paper on Figshare …… Seems like a worthy ambition and worth a look. Some key bits: Vision The rapid pace of scientific advancement presents a continuing challenge to effective life science education. The genomics revolution brings with it a unique challenge for the biology educator, as …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Summary and Class Materials

As introduced a few months ago, our lab (with indispensable help again from Ashley Vater) taught a new research-based freshman seminar course.  The impetus for this course was one that we ran last year, testing if Swabs to Genomes was possible in a 10-week quarter.  Given the complexity and expense of the genome sequencing, we …

Gut Check: The Microbiome Game now available for purchase

So 18 months after we released the free, print-at-home version of Gut Check: The Microbiome game we finally have a commercial version!  The game is available from MOBIO Laboratories here, for the very reasonable price of $20 with free shipping.  For a really nice write-up about the game, check out this blog post from Anne …

Swabs to Genomes Workflow… as a class!

For the last few years our lab has been really excited about the idea of having undergraduates culture bacterial isolates and sequence their genomes.  Starting with the Undergraduate Built Environment Genomes Project in 2011, we went on to re-write and upgrade the assembly pipeline that we use, followed by the publication of the “Swabs to …

New issue of JMBE focusing on Scientific Citizenship

The ASM Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education recently released a special themed issue focusing on Scientific Citizenship (table of contents) that was guest edited by Jack Gilbert, Karen Klyczek and Samantha Elliott. In this issue, the editors seek to address the question: How can we engage people in science? And they hope to provide a snapshot of current ideas …