ASM 2008: Around the world in 3000 presentations
Between the talks and the poster presentations, researchers here have been studying microbes in just about every environment you can imagine. Here’s a quick run down of what microbes call home: the crook of your elbow, 26,500 year old Antarctic algal mats, the space shuttle assembly platform, a tar pond, hospital room drains, stored space shuttle food waste, the guts of the medicinal leech Hirudo verbana, ready-to-use fresh salad in Vienna, infant formula production facilities, Chihuahua cheese, uranium contaminated groundwater, sea turtle tumours, the ‘dead zone’ off the coast of Oregon, and of course the usual deep sea thermal vents and acid mine drainage pools.
Where they do not call home: the Atacama Desert.
