Want more research funding? Time to give your study organism a better nickname

People who work on pathogens, especially really nasty ones, have built in marketing and fundraising tools. They have nicknames (for the organism, the disease, or both): Good ones. Like "black death" "flesh eating bacteria" "bone break fever" any "wasting disease" any "hemorrhagic fever" "male killer" and more. Now - there are a few non pathogens with good nicknames, like "Conan the bacterium" for Deinococcus radiodurans. But I think we really need to work on better nicknames for non pathogenic microbes. So here are a few proposals:

Any halophilic archaea -> "salt monsters"
Prochlorococcus -> The carbon eater
Rhizobium -> The fixer
Any methanogen -> Fartilicious
Myxococcus xanthus -> The stalker
Nanoarchaeum -> The Hobbit
Tetrahymena thermophila -> The hymenator

Come on everyone.  Let's get some better nicknames.

If you subscribe to the NY Times - you might want to cancel to get their secret discount

Just got this email

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Which then caused me to go back to my trash and read the previous one:

Maybe the next thing is animal fecal transplant toys? #poop

OK - this is a bit gross - but whatever.  At the National Zoo the other day at the store my kids pointed out these "Pooping Animal Key Chains".  Wonder what is next?

IMG_0061.MOV Watch on Posterous

Something smells off with this - grant to fund travel to meeting, if you use Roche technologies

Just got this email from Roche announcing a grant program to pay registration and travel fees for the AGBT meeting if you are using Roche-454 sequencing or Roche-Nimblegen arrays as part of your work (see below).  Seems like this would have some of the same conflict of interest issues as a pharma company paying someone to give a talk.  I note - I participated in a session supported by 454 at a meeting but paid my own way to avoid this type of conflict of interest issue.  Anyone have opinions on this?  Is this a common pharma method creeping its way more and more into genomics?

Germophobia: wanna get people in the mood for "Contagion" movie about killer virus - grow harmless microbes in public #microbialart

Well, this story is pretty cool in many ways. David Coil, who works on my "microBEnet" project posted an entry on our blog: Microbial art in the built environment: bacterial billboard goes viral which called my attention to the story.

Seems that the folks promoting the microbe-focused movie "Contagion" came up with a fun marketing idea. They created a living billboard with microbes on it



It is pretty cool. Just watch how the letters come out and the billboard becomes 3D. It would be fun to do this with some event at UC Davis .. will have to think about it. But overall, I think this idea is really cool and very very well executed.

However, I do want to note some of the reporting on it has gotten a few details a bit off. For example, in the Washington Post: ‘Contagion’ bacteria billboard is exactly what it sounds like (Video) - Celebritology 2.0 - The Washington Post they write

"A YouTube video shows the process in which “two large Petri dishes were inoculated with live bacteria including penicillin, mold and pigmented bacteria.” The result is the most amazing, creepy and literal viral marketing campaign in recent history"

Fun with marketing #numerology

Just got an email marketing a new book on numerology.  I have a feeling, just a slight one, the marketer does not know much about me. But I thought I would share so everyone can ponder numerology. In order to spare people if they are not interested I have put everything below the "jump break"