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Distinct microbial communities inhabit individuals as part of the human skin microbiome and are continually shed to the surrounding environment. Microbial communities from 17 skin sites of 10 sexually active cohabiting couples (20 individuals) were sampled to test whether cohabitation impacts an individual's skin microbiome, leading to shared skin microbiota among partner pairs. Amplified 16S rRNA genes of bacteria and archaea from a total of 340 skin swabs were analyzed by high-throughput sequencing, and the results demonstrated that cohabitation was significantly associated with microbial community composition, although this association was greatly exceeded by characteristics of body location and individuality. Random forest modeling demonstrated that the partners could be predicted 86% of the time (P < 0.001) based on their skin microbiome profiles, which was always greater than combinations of incorrectly matched partners. Cohabiting couples had the most similar overall microbial skin communities on their feet, according to Bray-Curtis distances. In contrast, thigh microbial communities were strongly associated with biological sex rather than cohabiting partner. Additional factors that were associated with the skin microbiome of specific body locations included the use of skin care products, pet ownership, allergies, and alcohol consumption. These baseline data identified links between the skin microbiome and daily interactions among cohabiting individuals, adding to known factors that shape the human microbiome and, by extension, its relation to human health. IMPORTANCE Our work characterizes the influence of cohabitation as a factor influencing the composition of the skin microbiome. Although the body site and sampled individual were stronger influences than other factors collected as metadata in this study, we show that modeling of detected microbial taxa can help with correct identifications of cohabiting partners based on skin microbiome profiles using machine learning approaches. These results show that a cohabiting partner can significantly influence our microbiota. Follow-up studies will be important for investigating the implications of shared microbiota on dermatological health and the contributions of cohabiting parents to the microbiome profiles of their infants.
Pubmed ID: 28761935
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Database of biological data related to a single initiative, originating from a single organization or from a consortium. A BioProject record provides users a single place to find links to the diverse data types generated for that project. It is a searchable collection of complete and incomplete (in-progress) large-scale sequencing, assembly, annotation, and mapping projects for cellular organisms. Submissions are supported by a web-based Submission Portal. The database facilitates organization and classification of project data submitted to NCBI, EBI and DDBJ databases that captures descriptive information about research projects that result in high volume submissions to archival databases, ties together related data across multiple archives and serves as a central portal by which to inform users of data availability. BioProject records link to corresponding data stored in archival repositories. The BioProject resource is a redesigned, expanded, replacement of the NCBI Genome Project resource. The redesign adds tracking of several data elements including more precise information about a project''''s scope, material, and objectives. Genome Project identifiers are retained in the BioProject as the ID value for a record, and an Accession number has been added. Database content is exchanged with other members of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC). BioProject is accessible via FTP.
View all literature mentionsSoftware program to align Illumina reads, optionally with PCR primers embedded in the sequence, and reconstruct an overlapping sequence.
View all literature mentionsAn Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) clustering software for 16S and other marker genes. Highly accurate OTU sequences and improved diversity measures.
View all literature mentionsTHIS RESOURCE IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE. Documented on February 23,2023.Software package for comparison and analysis of microbial communities, primarily based on high-throughput amplicon sequencing data, but also supporting analysis of other types of data. QIMME analyzes and transforms raw sequencing data generated on Illumina or other platforms to publication quality graphics and statistics.
View all literature mentionsOpen source software package for statistical programming language R to create plots based on grammar of graphics. Used for data visualization to break up graphs into semantic components such as scales and layers.
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