Notes on #UCDavis Citizen Microbiology Meeting #UCDCitSci

We had a meeting at UC Davis on "Citizen Microbiology" from 1/23-1/24. It was a small meeting funded via my microBEnet project which itself is supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Fundation. The meeting was held at UC Davis - participants stayed at the new Hyatt on campus. We met in the new Conference Center. Participants at the meeting were me, David Coil (post doc in my lab), Paula Olsiewski (from the Sloan Foundation), Holly Bik (post doc in my lab), Darlene Cavalier (founder of ScienceForCitizens.Net), Dan Smith from Argonne National Lab, Denneal Jamison from UC Davis, Holly Menninger from NC State, Noah Feirer from CU Boulder, Josh Neufeld from Waterloo, Jason Bobe from The Personal Genome Project, Tom Bruns form UC Berkeley, Madhu Katti from Fresno State, Chris House from Penn. State, and Patrik D'haeseleer (from Lawrence Livermore National Lab).
Below is a "Storification" I made of the tweets and links from the meeting.

Crosspost from http://microbe.net - fun stuff from Rob Dunn

I am cross-posting this from the microBEnet blog I co-write:

I am enjoying the posts to the Scientific American Blogs by Rob Dunn on his and other Citizen Science project(s) and I thought I would share here.

• Scientist Spots Missing Link in his Basement, but is too Sleepy to Catch it | Compound Eye, Scientific American Blog Network.
• The top 10 life-forms living on Lady Gaga (and you)
• Man discovers a new life-form at a South African truck stop

If you do not know about Rob Dunn's projects, well, you should.  I am particularly fascinated by "The Wild Life of Your Homes" which relate to the above posts.  He does some other fascinating projects too like "School of Ants" and "Wild Life of Your Body".  Completely brilliant stuff worth checking out.

Researchers seeking volunteers who have had HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema)

Just a mini post here. If you have ever had high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE, also known as altitude sickness  which they refer to as "a devastating form of altitude sickness") or know someone how has please check out: Altitude.org | Join the International HAPE Database. A group of researchers are seeking people to register in their HAPE database for future scientific studies of HAPE.

And so as to not have a post with just text I am putting in some pics of me in semi-high places (never gotten HAPE myself)

At Breckenridge

Atop Pico Bolivar in Venezuela

On top of Gothic Mountain in CO

More on the Bioweathermap project #NotAboutWeather #ItsAboutMicrobes #AndMoney #CitizenMicrobiology

Just a mini post here about Bioweathermap.  I had posted a mini post about this project in July: Desperate to know what microbes are on your money? This project is for you (with some cool side science benefits).  I got reminded about this by this PLoS Blog: DIY Science at #SciBarSpace 2 | The Official PLoS Blog.  The PLoS blog discusses a talk by Jason Bobe about Bioweathermap.

Bioweathermap is not the most accurately named project but it is pretty cool.  From their site:

The BioWeatherMap initiative is a global, grassroots, distributed environmental sensing effort aimed at answering some very basic questions about the geographic and temporal distribution patterns of microbial life. Utilizing the power of high-throughput, low cost DNA sequencing and harnessing the drive of an enlightened public we propose a new collaborative research approach aimed at generating a steady stream of environmental samples from many geographic locations to produce high quality data for ongoing discovery and surveillance. Our approach will provide a unique opportunity to engage the public in the scientific research process while we address fundamental questions such as “How diverse is the microbial life around us?” and “How do microbial communities in different habitats change over time?” and “How can advanced sequencing technologies best be utilized to address issues in biodiversity, public health, and biosurveillance?”

In other words, it is about microbes (suggestion to them - it might be good to have something about microbes in the title of the project - maybe "microbioweathermap" or something like that).  Anyway, to do the project they have been collecting dollar bills from various people:

From PLoS Blog.

And then characterizing the microbes on those bills.  I note - Jason collected the bill from me when we met at the book launch party for Thomas Goetz's "The Decision Tree".  Anyway - in essence this is a citizen microbiology project and it is worth checking out.  For more on it see:

• The Bioweathermap Sees The Germs Around Us - Forbes
• The Bioweathermap Facebook page
• Some of their videos on Vimeo

Seems to me there are more and more Citizen Microbiology projects out there.  For some other posts of mine about CM projects (got to give them an abbreviation) see:

• What microbes are lurking in your fish tank? 
• More on citizen microbiology project from @Penn_State & @NASA on thermophiles in water heaters via @scicheer @Sci4Cits
• Citizen Science
• Share the thermophiles lurking in your basement

Go microbes.  Go citizens.  Go citizen microbiology.