Monthly Archives: December 2015

Contributed by Robin Jones It’s New Year’s Eve! As a child I couldn’t wait to see if I could stay awake long enough to celebrate the turning of the clock from 11:59 pm to 12:00 am. I would always have 1 party … Continue reading →

Contributed by Bart Weimer Ph.D. WGS is becoming the method of choice for food safety outbreak and surveillance. The US CDC, US FDA, and the EU CDC (ECDC) have all announced that they will transition from pervious typing methods and … Continue reading →

Contributed by Carol Huang The recent news about former president Jimmy Carter’s cancer has stopped spreading and is “responding well to treatment,” has drawn great attention to immunotherapy. Carter, 91, announced in August that four spots of cancer, melanoma had … Continue reading →

Contributed by Bart C. Weimer, Ph.D. Food microbiologists have wrestled with the concept of non-culturable bacteria (NCB). It is well accepted in environmental microbiology the NCB are common. The expanded importance of the gut microbiome has raised this issue to … Continue reading →

Contributed by Azarene Foutouhi  Following a devastating earthquake in 2010 Haiti felt the beginnings of a Cholera outbreak. As in the case of many natural disasters, there was a resultant influx of aid in the form of supplies and volunteers … Continue reading →

Contributed by Ning Chin The U.S. National Institutes of Health has devoted a considerable amount of research funds on the Human Microbiome Project. Since 2008, a lot of research was done to identify the species of bacteria existing on the … Continue reading →

Contributed by Roberto Torres Helicobacter pylori is a gram negative bacterium which colonizes the human gastric mucosa. In the 1980’s, through biopsies and histological observations, Doctors Robin Warren and Barry Marshall proposed that peptic ulcers were caused by a gastric epithelial … Continue reading →

Contributed by Nguyet Kong The beneficial bacteria in the citrus tree is actually the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), a pest that is the carrier spreading huanglongbing (HLB) The Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), which spreads the pathogen believed to cause citrus greening … Continue reading →

Contributed by Poyin Chen For my upcoming wedding, we will have a tree planting ceremony. As part of the ceremony, we will be planting our little love tree in soil from both of our families’ homes…a little from the Bay … Continue reading →