Podcast-Sarah Elizabeth Kwan, PhM, EIT – Peccia Env Biotechnology Lab at Yale – Microbiology of the Built Environment

Episode 445 interviews Sarah Kwan, who is a Ph.D. candidate and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Peccia Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory at Yale University. She also received her M.S and Ph.M. in Environmental Engineering from Yale. Recently, she has been conducting research investigating the correlation of indoor air pollution in homes and schools of the Cherokee Nation …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, November 19, 2016

Microbes in the city Microbial Community Patterns Associated with Automated Teller Machine Keypads in New York City – Holly M. Bik – mSphere (OA). News coverage at EurekAlert, ScienceDaily, and NYMagazine. (…) Here we carried out a baseline study of automated teller machine (ATM) keypads in New York City (NYC). Our goal was to describe …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, November 12, 2016

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last posts due to some work-related trips and changing jobs. Since last week, I am the new Science Editor at uBiome. So here is a longish post to catch up with papers and news articles on microbes of the Built Environment. Microbes and buildings Popular press: ‘Living buildings’ …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, October 15, 2016

Microbes indoors Review: Microorganisms in Confined Habitats: Microbial Monitoring and Control of Intensive Care Units, Operating Rooms, Cleanrooms and the International Space Station – Maximilian Mora – Frontiers in Microbiology (OA) Indoor environments, where people spend most of their time, are characterized by a specific microbial community, the indoor microbiome. Most indoor environments are connected to …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, September 3, 2016

Microbes in the hospital Extreme Dysbiosis of the Microbiome in Critical Illness — Daniel McDonald — mSphere (OA) (…)  A trial with prospective monitoring of the intensive care unit (ICU) patient microbiome using culture-independent techniques to confirm and characterize this dysbiosis is thus urgently needed. Characterizing ICU patient microbiome changes may provide first steps toward the …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, July 2, 2016

Microbes in the city Also see this blog post earlier this week: Urban Transit System Microbial Communities Differ by Surface Type and Interaction with Humans and the Environment – Tiffany Hsu – mSystems (OA) Public transit systems are ideal for studying the urban microbiome and interindividual community transfer. In this study, we used 16S amplicon and …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, June 12, 2016

Microbes in the house Fungal and bacterial growth in floor dust at elevated relative humidity levels — Karen C. Dannemiller — Indoor Air ($6 to rent, $38 to own) Under sustained, elevated building moisture conditions, bacterial and fungal growth occurs. The goal of this study was to characterize microbial growth in floor dust at variable …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, April 13, 2016

New papers on the intersection of human activities and microbes, selected from my daily MicrobiomeDigest blog. Microbes in the house Generation and Characterization of Indoor Fungal Aerosols for Inhalation Studies – Anne Mette Madsen – Applied and Environmental Microbiology (OA) (…) The aim of this study was to develop an inhalation exposure system to be able to examine …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, April 3, 2016

Your weekly update with new papers on the microbiology of the built environment, and the effect of humans on microbial communities in a broader sense. Microbes in the house Microbial analyses of airborne dust collected from dormitory rooms predict the sex of occupants – Julia C Luongo – Indoor Air ($38 for PDF, $6 to …

New papers on microbiology of the built environment, March 26, 2016

Your weekend update: Microbes and drinking water Diversity of ribosomal 16S DNA- and RNA-based bacterial community in an office building drinking water system – Jenni Inkinen – Journal of Applied Microbiology  (See also their 2014 Water Research paper about same system) Next-generation sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) and ribosomal RNA (rRNA) was used to characterize …