Sunday, April 10, 2011

microBEnet now at http://microbe.net

We have now gotten our own site and are moving activities over to there: http://microbe.net.  The new blog site is http://www.microbe.net/microbenet-blog/

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Upcoming conference: DOE-JGI User Meeting: Energy, Genomes, Environment, Microbes, Trees and more ...

Just got this email I thought would be useful to share (with a few edits)

Still time to register for JGI "Genomics of Energy & Environment" 6th Annual User Meeting

The DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) hosts the "Genomics of Energy & Environment" 6th Annual User Meeting (March 22-24, 2011):
Here

Explore the agenda of presentations, poster sessions, and valuable hands-on workshops (see below).

The meeting brings together,at the Walnut Creek Marriott, people working on:

Synthetic Biology
Ecogenomics and Ecoresilience of the Gulf Oil Spill
Hardware and Software Trends in Genomics Supercomputing
Computational Approaches to Massive Short Read Metagenomic Data Sets
Genomics of Biofuel Crops
Behavioral Genetics of Pollinating Bees
Microbiome Analyses from Humans to Shipworms
Metatranscriptomics of Marine Microbial Communities
Successful Transposable Elements Secrets
Great Prairie Soil Metagenomics

Confirmed speakers include:

Peer Bork, (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) EMBL

Ed Buckler, Cornell University

Dan Distel, Ocean Genome Legacy

Persis Drell, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory/Stanford

Terry Hazen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)

Scott Hodges, University of California, Santa Barbara

Tom Juenger, University of Texas at Austin

Rob Knight, University of Colorado

Ruth Ley, Cornell University

Mary Ann Moran, University of Georgia

Magnus Nordborg, Gregor Mendel Institute

Gene Robinson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Christopher Scholin, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)

Stephan Schuster, Penn State University

Pam Silver, Harvard

Jim Tiedje, Michigan State University

Mike Thomashow, Michigan State University

Jerry Tuskan, Oak Ridge National Laboratory/DOE JGI

Katherine Yelick, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at LBNL

Workshops will include:
Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG)/Metagenomes data analysis systems http://img.jgi.doe.gov/

Mycocosm fungal genomics portal provides data access, visualization, and analysis tools for comparative genomics of fungi http://genome.jgi-psf.org/ programs/fungi/index.jsf

Phytozome provides data access and visualization tools for comparative plant genomics http://www.phytozome.net/
RNA Technologies & Analysis: a comprehensive suite for transcriptome
interrogation, including RNA-Seq for expression profiling, etc.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Interesting take (though not completely convincing) take on NEJM farm microbe story

There is an interesting take in Forbes on a recent study NEJM on microbes and people growing up on farms.

Not totally convinced of the opinion of the writer, but with a look.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Friday, February 4, 2011

Indoor Air 2011; Austin, Tx; June 5-10 #microBEnet

Just thought I would give people the heads up - I am helping plan a session on "Microbiology of the Indoor Environment" that will happen at the "Indoor Air 2011" meeting in Austin, TX June 5-10 2011. The conference itself covers an enormous amount of ground about, well, Indoor Air. And I am helping the meeting organizer Rich Corsi plan a special session that will try to bring together (1) researchers working on culture-independent studies of the microbes in the indoor environment with (2) scientists and engineers and others who work on the indoor environment. Will post more about this special session as details come out. But thought I would give people a heads up ...


I note, this is a component of the Sloan Foundation's New program in Indoor Microbiology - I have received a grant from them to create something called microBEnet ("microbiology of the Built Environment network"). In this microBEnet project we will be working to foster communication, collaboration, research and other related activities for the Sloan Program. More coming on microBEnet soon but if you want a little taste (a very preliminary taste) - see our blog here.

The Microbe Project - A Portal to Federal Efforts in Microbial Research

This is a page with some useful information about a program to coordinate microbiology work at multiple federal funding agencies: The Microbe Project - A Portal to Federal Efforts in Microbial Research