The Influence of Age and Gender on Skin-Associated Microbial Communities in Urban and Rural Human Populations

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 10; no. 10; p. e0141842
• Main Authors: Ying, Shi, Zeng, Dan-Ning, Chi, Liang, Tan, Yuan, Galzote, Carlos, Cardona, Cesar, Lax, Simon, Gilbert, Jack, Quan, Zhe-Xue
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 28.10.2015; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescents; Adult; Adults; Age; Age Factors; Bacteria; Bacteria - classification; Bacteria - genetics; BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES; Biodiversity; Biogeography; Child; Cluster Analysis; Community structure; Computational Biology; Demographic aspects; Disease susceptibility; Ecology; elderly; Engineering; Evolution; Female; Forecasts and trends; Gender; Genomes; Geriatrics; Human populations; Humans; Infectious skin diseases; Laboratories; Life sciences; Male; Metagenome; Microbial activity; microbiome; Microbiota; Microorganisms; Middle Aged; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Older people; Phylogenetics; polymerase chain reaction; Population; Populations; Public health administration; Public Health Surveillance; Relative abundance; Risk factors; Rural areas; Rural communities; Rural environments; Rural Population; Rural populations; sequence alignment; sequence databases; Sex Factors; Skin; Skin - microbiology; Urban areas; urban environments; Urban Population; Urban populations; Young Adult; Chicago Illinois; United States > US; Illinois; China
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141842
• ISSN: 1932-6203

Differences in the bacterial community structure associated with 7 skin sites in 71 healthy people over five days showed significant correlations with age, gender, physical skin parameters, and whether participants lived in urban or rural locations in the same city. While body site explained the majority of the variance in bacterial community structure, the composition of the skin-associated bacterial communities were predominantly influenced by whether the participants were living in an urban or rural environment, with a significantly greater relative abundance of Trabulsiella in urban populations. Adults maintained greater overall microbial diversity than adolescents or the elderly, while the intragroup variation among the elderly and rural populations was significantly greater. Skin-associated bacterial community structure and composition could predict whether a sample came from an urban or a rural resident ~5x greater than random.