TY - JOUR
T1 - Geography and location are the primary drivers of office microbiome composition
AU - Chase, John
AU - Fouquier, Jennifer
AU - Zare, Mahnaz
AU - Sonderegger, Derek L.
AU - Knight, Rob
AU - Kelley, Scott T.
AU - Siegel, Jeffrey
AU - Caporaso, J. Gregory
N1 - Funding Information:
This work, including the efforts of Rob Knight, Scott Kelley, Jeffrey Siegel, and J. Gregory Caporaso, was funded by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Chase et al.
PY - 2016/3/1
Y1 - 2016/3/1
N2 - In the United States, humans spend the majority of their time indoors, where they are exposed to the microbiome of the built environment (BE) they inhabit. Despite the ubiquity of microbes in BEs and their potential impacts on health and building materials, basic questions about the microbiology of these environments remain unanswered. We present a study on the impacts of geography, material type, human interaction, location in a room, seasonal variation, and indoor and microenvironmental parameters on bacterial communities in offices. Our data elucidate several important features of microbial communities in BEs. First, under normal office environmental conditions, bacterial communities do not differ on the basis of surface material (e.g., ceiling tile or carpet) but do differ on the basis of the location in a room (e.g., ceiling or floor), two features that are often conflated but that we are able to separate here. We suspect that previous work showing differences in bacterial composition with surface material was likely detecting differences based on different usage patterns. Next, we find that offices have city-specific bacterial communities, such that we can accurately predict which city an office microbiome sample is derived from, but office-specific bacterial communities are less apparent. This differs from previous work, which has suggested office-specific compositions of bacterial communities. We again suspect that the difference from prior work arises from different usage patterns. As has been previously shown, we observe that human skin contributes heavily to the composition of BE surfaces.
AB - In the United States, humans spend the majority of their time indoors, where they are exposed to the microbiome of the built environment (BE) they inhabit. Despite the ubiquity of microbes in BEs and their potential impacts on health and building materials, basic questions about the microbiology of these environments remain unanswered. We present a study on the impacts of geography, material type, human interaction, location in a room, seasonal variation, and indoor and microenvironmental parameters on bacterial communities in offices. Our data elucidate several important features of microbial communities in BEs. First, under normal office environmental conditions, bacterial communities do not differ on the basis of surface material (e.g., ceiling tile or carpet) but do differ on the basis of the location in a room (e.g., ceiling or floor), two features that are often conflated but that we are able to separate here. We suspect that previous work showing differences in bacterial composition with surface material was likely detecting differences based on different usage patterns. Next, we find that offices have city-specific bacterial communities, such that we can accurately predict which city an office microbiome sample is derived from, but office-specific bacterial communities are less apparent. This differs from previous work, which has suggested office-specific compositions of bacterial communities. We again suspect that the difference from prior work arises from different usage patterns. As has been previously shown, we observe that human skin contributes heavily to the composition of BE surfaces.
KW - Bacteria
KW - Built environment
KW - Fungi
KW - Microbiome
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U2 - 10.1128/mSystems.00022-16
DO - 10.1128/mSystems.00022-16
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84991275504
SN - 2379-5077
VL - 1
JO - mSystems
JF - mSystems
IS - 2
M1 - e00022-16
ER -