Anthony writes:

Anti-vaxx and now anti-wash?

The biggest advance in public health was the introduction of cotton clothing that could be vigorously washed.  It’s strange to see a clothing manufacturer seeking to undo this.

(Freezing is done in the attempt to remove microbes without laundering.)

# # #

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/investing/levis-jeans-freezer/index.html

Levi’s CEO: Don’t put your jeans in the freezer

By David Goldman, CNN Business

Updated 5:11 PM ET, Thu March 21, 2019

New York (CNN Business)Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh has some tips for jeans owners: Don’t freeze your jeans. And don’t put them in the washing machine.

Bergh turned heads and noses at a May 2014 event when he announced that he had never washed the pair of 501 Levi’s jeans he was wearing at the time. He still hasn’t washed that now-10-year-old pair of jeans, Bergh admitted on CNN Business’ Markets Now live show with Alison Kosik on Thursday.

Ben writes:

Dear hosts of Fusobacterium nucleaTWiM (sorry I am stretching it a little there J)

I’ve been listening to the TWiX series for a few months now, starting with TWiP (because I’m a doing a parasitology PhD) but now working my way back through the TWiM catalogue! I have a suggestion for a recent paper on BioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/04/03/596486.full.pdf) where the authors are able to individually identify 19 different species of bacterial pathogens using 3D tomography and machine learning. While it hasn’t been peer reviewed, I think the fact that people are coming up with these kinds of projects now and they actually work is incredible! I also heard a talk a little while ago about someone who had developed a flow cytometry assay based on machine learning that could distinguish between a number of bacterial species and determine their antibody sensitivities within only 30 minutes or so, the idea being it would be done while you wait at the doctor’s office. Amazing!

I was interested in this paper mostly because a part of my PhD is to develop automated and quantitative super-resolution microscopy tools for studying protein function in malaria parasites. A few months ago, I also wrote up a little grant to try and quantify live malaria parasite invasion into erythrocytes using tomography and machine learning (just like the paper), because we can differentiate the extracellular parasite, an uninfected cell and each stage of the intracellular lifecycle based on differences in refractive index. Unfortunately, it wasn’t successful but that won’t stop me from trying again in the future!

While doing a parasitology PhD, I am just fascinated by microbiology as a whole. This no doubt is fostered in part by the fact that until a few weeks ago our lab was housed inside a bacteriology lab. Because of that, one of my co-supervisors is Professor James Paton, who works on the pneumococcus and has some very cool projects looking at the relationship between sugar metabolism and invasive disease and also serotype-independent vaccines.

Even though we are well and truly into autumn, it was a beautiful day today in sunny South Australia at 31oC. If it keeps going this way, I don’t think there will be many leaves to clean from the streets!

Sorry for the lengthy email, but thank you all endlessly for colonising my ears with microbial magic!

Regards,

Ben

Ben Liffner

PhD Candidate – Malaria Biology Lab (Wilson Lab)

Research Centre for Infectious Diseases

School of Biological Sciences

The University of Adelaide

Richard writes:

More to substantiate multiple oral microbes found in periodontal disease lesions as possible causal factors for Alzheimer’s complimenting study reviewed in TWIM #195

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26252400

Justin writes:

Space.com: There Are Fungi All Over the Space Station, and Now We Know What They Are.

https://www.space.com/microbes-fungi-space-station-identified.html

Ryan writes:

I just read a few articles on “Gut Bacteria and Autism” connections

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2019-04-12/could-treating-gut-bacteria-help-ease-autism-symptoms

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190409093725.htm

Right now I think the connections still need to be verified here I don’t know how many years will the FDA or CDC will confirm this connection or not though.