I’ve snuck into a quiet little room with big comfortable chairs and more than one sleeping microbiologist. (With ‘sunrise sessions’ starting at 6.30 AM, who can blame them!) So, as I listen to the gentle snoring of one of my companions, here are a few highlights from a press conference on the human microbiome.

As a loyal NatureNews reader, you’ve heard plenty about the microbiome (for instance here or here). Basically it’s the sum of all the bacteria living in the human body. A frequently trotted out statistic: there are ten times more bacterial cells in the human body than human cells. It’s incredibly complex. Many of your bacteria are different from my bacteria. And the population of bacteria on your forearm is very different from the population in the crease of your elbow, said NYU’s Martin Blaser. David Relman of Stanford noted that our microbiomes might one day be used as a biometric, like a fingerprint, except that the microbes might reveal a bit more: where you’ve been, what you ate while you were there, etc. He also pointed out that microbiomics (my word, not his) began in 1683 when van Leeuwenhoek scraped one of his teeth and compared the results under a microscope to samples taken from his colleagues.

The panelists agreed that since we don’t understand everything that our microbes are doing for us, we also don’t understand the long-term ramifications of taking antibiotics. Blaser speculated that there could be cumulative effects from disrupting your microbiome that we don’t yet appreciate. Claire Fraser-Liggett said her friends call her a ‘thereapeutic nihilist’ because she avoids taking antibiotics whenever possible.

Blaser made another interesting comment: that our current focus on finding genetic variations linked to disease may one day give way to a realization that differences in our bacteria are just as important.

Richard Henkel of the Centers for Disease Control gave a talk yesterday about biosafety in the lab. It was primarily a nitty-gritty run-down of which forms to fill out if there’s a theft, loss, or release of potentially harmful microbes or toxins that are on the US ‘select agent’ list. In case you’re wondering, you may need to file a ‘Form 3’ in that event. And he gave a few interesting statistics on how many Form 3’s have been filed over the years:

2003: 4

2004: 19

2005: 19

2006: 24

2007: 60 (plus one case in which an institution failed to report an illness contracted from on-the-job exposure)

2008 (through April): 32

(Henkel attributes the dramatic increase to higher awareness of proper reporting.)

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.

Two researchers from the University of Colorado in Denver, Munira Albuthi and Timberley Roane, are proposing an unusual use for an unusual bacterium: detoxifying Native American artifacts.

The bacterium is Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34 (the bacterium formerly known as Ralstonia metallidurans CH34, for those of you keeping track). C. metallidurans has an unusual ability to flourish around heavy metals at concentrations that would normally be lethal. (The critter was first isolated from the sludge of a Belgium zinc decantation tank, according to the Joint Genomes Institute.)

Now, Albuthi and Roane hope to use the bacterium to decontaminate Native American artifacts. The artifacts were once collected by museums, but have since been returned to Native American tribes. Unfortunately, before they were returned, the artifacts were treated with a mercury-containing pesticide for preservation. The mercury poses a health hazard, and Albuthi and Roane hope to spray down the artifacts with C. metallidurans, which is able to detoxify the mercury. So far, they’re just in preliminary stages of testing, but the bacterium was able to remove 60% of the mercury from a mercury-soaked piece of paper.

Hello and welcome to the American Society for Microbiology’s annual microbial extravaganza! This year’s shindig is in Boston, and the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center has literally laid out a red carpet to welcome the glitterati of the microbiology world. (I was amused to see that they’ve also placed the pressroom right next to the children’s daycare center. A subtle comment on our maturity level? Perhaps.)

Judging from this morning’s poster session, this looks to be a fun meeting. It’s a busy one, too – with over 3000 presentations, it can be hard to pick out which ones to attend. If any of you out there have suggestions to help me weed through the 300+ page program, please let me know: you can contact me by posting a comment here or via email: h.ledford at boston dot nature dot com.