Meet The Microbiologist - The Scientists Behind The Microbiology

Jack Gilbert talks about his studies on microbiomes of all sorts. He describes the origin of the Earth Microbiome Project, which has ambitions to characterize all microbial life on the planet, and talks more specifically about the built microbiome of manmade ecosystems such as hospitals. Gilbert explains how advances in scientific techniques have driven past microbiome-related discoveries and will continue to do so in the future. Host: Julie Wolf Subscribe (free) on iPhone, Android, RSS, or by email. You can also listen on your mobile device with the ASM Podcast app. Julie's biggest takeaways: Insect-pathogenic fungi living in plant roots can pass nitrogen from killed insects to their plant hosts, receiving different carbon nutrients from the plants in return. Fungi harvested after growth on inexpensive materials like chicken droppings are used in agriculture both as fertilizer and as insecticide. Cyclosporine was first discovered in insect-pathogenic fungi. Raymond St. Leger and other scientists work