Squiggly virus

from my favorite satire site:

Deadly New Virus Found To Be 'Real Squiggly

vaccines not cancellations for flu?

Study of the UCSD campus during a 2009 H1N1 outbreak

http://www.asm.org/index.php/news-room/how-flu-virus-spreads-to-college-community-major-implications-for-control.html (also has link to original journal article there)


highlights:

• quite a diversity of flu strains coming into the campus
• influx of strains has enough impact on the student community that they end up recommending that perhaps vaccinations are more important than doing something like cancelling classes as a way to prevent spread

would this be a pattern seen consistently enough to apply to our school? Neat application.

fun with micro numbers

Some numbers pulled off of the Twitter feed #microbiologybynumbers

• Viruses
• if all viruses on earth laid end to end they'd stretch for 100,000,000 light years (not sure if I believe this one)
• 8% our genome is thought to be comprised of defunct viral DNA
• viral lysis in surface waters kill off 20-40% of oceanic prokaryotes daily
• more bacteria in the oceans (10^28) than there are stars in the universe
• 400 g of botulism toxin (produced by Clostridium botulinum) could wipe out all humans on the planet
• Gut bacteria
• gut flora genes outnumber our gene set by 100 fold (same thing I had noted in an earlier post)
• there are more bacteria in the gut than total number of people who have ever lived
• human excrete their weight in faecal bacteria every year
• you have ~1 kg bacteria in your gut

This led me to another interesting website that attempts to catalogue crazy information like these: http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/default.aspx

Isolation of a cellulase enzyme capable with optimal temp of 109 deg C

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/07/05/hot-springs-microbe-yields-record-breaking-heat-tolerant-enzyme/

highlights: 

• Isolated from a hot spring
• an archaea
• metagenomics later used to implicate a few other archaea as well

whole genome sequencing of E.coli in outbreak

Article in Genome Technology this month: (click to see it)

stresses the power of the genomics age. Check out this timeline:
- received sample on May 30
- completed genome sequencings on June 1
- Genomes assembled and submitted to NCBI by June 2

Findings
- that E. coli was a new strain
- that E. coli had many antibiotic resistance genes

concept of "Genomic epidemiology"discussed

Another part of this article looks at MRSA and genomic sequencing of 63 isolates - identifying 6700 SNP (single nucleotide polymorphisms) that accounted for the variability seen and related to the microevolutionary changes being seen.