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The Built Environment Is a Microbial Wasteland
#MMPMID27832216
Gibbons SM
mSystems
2016[Mar]; 1
(2
): ä PMID27832216
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Humanity's transition from the outdoor environment to the built environment (BE)
has reduced our exposure to microbial diversity. The relative importance of
factors that contribute to the composition of human-dominated BE microbial
communities remains largely unknown. In their article in this issue, Chase and
colleagues (J. Chase, J. Fouquier, M. Zare, D. L. Sonderegger, R. Knight, S. T.
Kelley, J. Siegel, and J. G. Caporaso, mSystems 1(2):e00022-16, 2016,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.00022-16) present an office building study in
which they controlled for environmental factors, geography, surface material,
sampling location, and human interaction type. They found that surface location
and geography were the strongest factors contributing to microbial community
structure, while surface material had little effect. Even in the absence of
direct human interaction, BE surfaces were composed of 25 to 30% human
skin-associated taxa. The authors demonstrate how technical variation across
sequencing runs is a major issue, especially in BE work, where the biomass is
often low and the potential for PCR contaminants is high. Overall, the authors
conclude that BE surfaces are desert-like environments where microbes passively
accumulate.
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