Looking back at 2012’s developments, trends and advancements, one cleanroom-related field that seems to be advancing faster than most is microbiology. Techniques for the identification of pathogenic bacteria have advanced dramatically, along with two other areas: our understanding of antibiotic resistance and of the importance of the microbiome.
Microbiologists have for some time been tracking microbes by sequencing their DNA; now they are looking at how various populations of microbes interact in specific environments.
In 2012, a new project by the Hospital Microbiome Consortium enabled researchers to access the construction site for the University of Chicago’s New Hospital Pavilion to determine how good and bad bacteria co-exist in a hospital, and whether the good can help keep out the bad.
Jack Gilbert, assistant professor of Ecology & Evolution at the University and environmental microbiologist at Argonne National Laboratory, explained that researchers are taking weekly samples of 187 sites (more than 12,000 samples) and measuring temperature, humidity and other parameters.
By the end of the project, Gilbert and his team will have been collecting microbial samples from surfaces and the air, from staff and patients for two years to better understand the factors that influence bacterial population development in healthcare environments. They hope to analyse the data to show how bacteria are introduced, how they colonise and how they are transmitted.
Just as genetics have changed medicine, this project and others, such as mapping the human microbiome, are likely to change practices in future.