Have you ever wondered what microbes are brewing in your showerhead? The Showerhead Microbiome Project is finding out! This project, run by a multi-institution group of researchers, is identifying what microbes live in showerheads and how the physical properties of the water and showerhead type may influence the microbial communities. But why should we even…
For most of us, the thought of sanitizing our kitchen sponges never crossed our minds. And that’s probably a good thing. Scientists from Germany recently reported what they found living inside kitchen sponges. They took samples from 14 used kitchen sponges and extracted DNA. What they found was an astounding 54 billion bacteria cells per…
“You can either embrace the dirt and the germs as part of the risky joy of living in an exciting, overpopulated metropolis, or you can spend lots of mental real estate obsessing over whether you touched a few extra microbes when you got on the subway.” – Zack Love When I first moved to Boston…
In recent years, the human microbiome has gotten a lot of press. We have read about how our gut microbes affect our eating habits, immune system and mind. But what about the microbes that surround us indoors? We spend most of our time indoors, at home, in our cars, in offices and other buildings. We…