Have you heard about the Earth Microbiome Project?  Led by the laboratories of Jack Gilbert from Argonne National Labs along with Folker Meyer (Argonne), Janet Jansson (LBNL), Rob Knight (University of Colorado), this is a pioneering effort to characterize the global microbial taxonomic and functional diversity from samples collected all over the world. 
Similar to the Human Microbiome Project, the Earth Microbiome Project [...]

During the ISME conference this past summer I had the opportunity to meet Richard White, and since then, we regularly converse about our research and improved techniques for some of his difficult and unusual samples. Rick is a graduate student in the lab of Curtis Suttle at the University of British Columbia studying microbial diversity in Pavilion [...]

 Next generation sequencing is a powerful method increasing in popularity for use in metagenomic and transcriptomic analysis in environmental microbiology. Compared to Sanger sequencing, next generation allows for sequencing of the complete genomic content of a sample without the need to make clone libraries. Using this technique, microbial community analysis can be performed in a [...]

As the U.S. struggles with the after effects of the oil spill on tourism, animal health, and food safety due to the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, microbiologists are stuggling to determine the scope of damage to microbial diversity in the ocean water and sediment.
The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20th, 2010 that resulted in the [...]

One of Dr. Janet Jansson’s many ongoing projects, and a big focus in microbiology over the last few years has been the study of the human gut microbiome. As ASM 2010 draws near, you can be sure that human microbiome research is an area that will get a lot of attention.
I thought it would be a good time to review [...]

In an ideal world, we would have time to read every great paper coming out in all the microbiology journals each month.  Instead we have to focus our reading on the topics that directly impact our research. But reading papers from other fields can often help us to find new methods or generate ideas for our projects [...]

In a previous article, we reviewed a paper that investigated the microbial communities living in showerhead biofilms coming from the municipal water supply. This week, we’ll take another look at what’s living in municipal drinking water and this time in Phoenix, Arizona.  This new 2010 paper from the Journal of Environmental Quality takes a close look at the [...]

How many of you run into problems of false- positive PCR or lack of sensitivity in qPCR when trying to use 16S primers because of the background genomic DNA in your PCR enzyme mixes?
Well, then check out this paper by a team on Switzerland on how to remove residual contaminating genomic DNA from the enzyme [...]

The fourth Thursday of November marks the annual tradition in the U.S. called Thanksgiving. Originally Thanksgiving was a religious holiday that has sinced turned secular and became a national holiday in 1941. Now, for families celebrating Thanksgiving, it is a time to cook a whole lot of food and eat way too much pumpkin pie.
Since [...]

How many of us dare to look up and actually take notice of the cleanliness of the showerhead during our morning shower? How often do you ever take a little Clorox to the showerhead?
Well according to a study published in PNAS this month (PNAS, Sep 2009; 106: 16393 – 16399) by Leah M. Feazel, Laura [...]