I’ve had the great pleasure of working directly with this week’s featured scientist, Bradley Tolar. I met Bradley at the ISME conference in 2010 and was intrigued by all of the exciting marine microbiology work under study in the Hollibaugh lab at the University of Georgia.  Since then we’ve been collaborating on projects together.  One of  them involves evaluating [...]

Corals are an essential part of a healthy reef ecosystem, providing the biological and structural framework upon which other reef organisms depend. Corals are declining on a global scale due to anthropogenic disturbances and disease. Although many coral diseases have been attributed to microbial pathogens, we now know that corals harbor diverse microbial communities during [...]

This month we talked with Dr. Christine Salomon, Assistant Professor at the Center for Drug Design in the University of Minnesota.  Dr. Salomon’s work intersects chemistry and microbial ecology in the hunt for interesting new natural products with far reaching potential applications.  While much effort has been expended in searching for organisms on the surface [...]

Metagenomic analysis of environmental diversity is an area of research that continues to rapidly expand in microbiology. Approaches to analyze DNA or RNA samples from soil, water, air, and biofilms involve amplification of the entire 16S rRNA sequences and then analysis of the content and abundance of microbes present.  Many researchers are using next generation sequencing for identification of [...]

MO BIO Laboratories celebrated 17 years of business this past August.  It is amazing how time flies. It seems like yesterday we celebrated 16 years by sharing with you 10 Little Known Facts about MO BIO.
To celebrate this year, we have compiled questions submitted by long-time MO BIO customers and collaborators, to create a video interview [...]

In the past 100 years we’ve learned that each one of us has unique fingerprints, and unique DNA sequences.  Now through the Human Microbiome Project, we’re learning that every one of us has a unique and identifiable bacterial community not only inside of us, but also growing on our skin as well.  Christian Lauber, a [...]

Last month, MO BIO Laboratories was fortunate enough to receive a visit from an exceptionally interesting scientist. Dr. Laurie Connell, of the University of Maine, is involved in a number of research projects spanning from the development of field detection instruments for the detrimental potato wart, to the analysis of paralytic shellfish toxins, to the [...]

MO BIO Laboratories is an ardent supporter of science education at all levels.  So when we heard about the pioneering soil microbiology classes being taught by Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, & Molecular Genetics at UCLA, Erin Sanders-Lorenz, we had to know more.

Wisconsin has lost over half of its wetlands due to urban sprawl.  Entire habitats are filled in due to construction of new roads and wetlands are permanently divided in half by freeways, reducing the amount of space for turtles to migrate and live.  When turtles do try and cross the road, well, you can imagine that their chances [...]

 Oak Ridge, Tennessee is famously known as the base of the Manhattan Project in the 1940’s which ultimately led to the development of the atomic bomb. Uranium enrichment activities on the Oak Ridge Reservation in the 1940s until the 1980s led to substantial contamination in nearby ponds that were used to dump waste. Since then [...]