获取，男孩！Study Shows Homes With Dogs Have More Types of Bacteria

New research from North Carolina State University and the University of Colorado shows that households with dogs are home to more types of bacteria – including bacteria that are rarely found in households that do not have dogs. The finding is part of a larger study to improve our understanding of the微观生活形态住在我们的家里。

“We wanted to know what variables influence the microbial ecosystems in our homes, and the biggest difference we’ve found so far is whether you own a dog,” says Dr. Rob Dunn, an associate professor of biology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. “We can tell whether you own a dog based on the bacteria we find on your television screen or pillow case. For example, there are bacteria normally found in soil that are 700 times more common in dog-owning households than in those without dogs.”

And these microbial differences may be important. For example, it’s known that women who have a dog in the home when pregnant are less likely to have children with allergies. This is a correlation – there’s no known causal link between the presence of a dog and the absence of allergies – but it has been hypothesized that the difference is related to the women’s exposure to a wider variety of microbes. However, to this point there were few data on what the differences in microbial populations might be. While this study doesn’t demonstrate a causal link, it sheds more light on the subject, showing that dogs have a major influence on which microbes are found in our homes.

Citizen scientists in 40 homes sampled nine common surfaces to help researchers determine what kinds of bacteria lived there, and in what relative numbers. The nine surfaces were wiped with sterile swabs from which researchers collected DNA to see which organisms were present. The nine surfaces were the television screen, kitchen counter, refrigerator, toilet seat, cutting board, pillow case, exterior door handle, the trim around an interior door and the trim around an exterior door.

该研究发现了7,726个种植体或种类的群体。该研究还发现，采样的每个地点都有其独特的细菌收集。研究人员能够将家庭中的采样表面分组为三种一般栖息地之一：我们触摸的地方，让我们的食物接触和收集灰尘的地方。例如，冰箱中发现的细菌类型，厨房柜台和切割板上往往是相似的 - 因为它们主要与我们的食物相关联。同时，在门把手，枕套和马桶座上发现的细菌也相当相似 - 来自人类。

“We leave a microbial ‘fingerprint’ on everything we touch,” Dunn says. “Sometimes those microbes come from our skin, sometimes they’re oral bacteria and – as often as not – they’re human fecal bacteria.”

The research also shows that the difference between habitats is greater than the difference between homes. For example, the bacteria on my pillow case are probably more similar to the bacteria on your pillow case than they are to the bacteria on my kitchen counter.

“这是有道理的，”Dunn说。“人类一直住在房屋里几千年，这是有机体足够的时代，以适应居住在房屋的特定部分。例如，我们知道，只有一种只在热水器加热器中生活。我们在不同的地方以不同的方式存放这些细菌的搭桥，他们根据他们的适应而茁壮成长或失败。“

研究人员目前正在从另外40家住宅中处理样本，并准备从美国的1,300家住宅调查中处理样本。国家调查在每个家庭中抽出了四个地点，代表了各种栖息地。

“更大的样本量将帮助我们更好的在20tand the range of variables that influence these microbial ecosystems,” Dunn says. “Does it matter if you have kids or live in an apartment? We expect the microbial populations of homes in deserts to be different from the populations of homes in Manhattan, but no one knows if that’s true. We want to find out.”

The paper, “家Life: Factors structuring the bacterial diversity found within and between homes,” was published inPLOS ONEMay 22. The paper was co-authored by Dunn; Dr. Holly Menninger, director of public science for theYour Wild Lifeprogram at NC State; and Dr. Noah Fierer, Jessica Henley and Jonathan Leff of the University of Colorado. The research was supported by the Sloan Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The dataset used for the paper is also publicly available at figshare:http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.674588.

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Note to Editors:The study abstract follows.

“家Life: Factors structuring the bacterial diversity found within and between homes”

Authors：罗伯特R. Dunn和Holly L. Menninger，北卡罗来纳州立大学;Noah Fierer，Jessica B. Henley和Jonathan W. Leff，科罗拉多大学

Published: May 22,PLOS ONE

DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0064133

Abstract:我们大部分时间都在室内花在我们接触到生活在表面的各种不同的微生物，以及在我们家的空中。尽管他们无处不在和丰富，但我们对家庭中发现的微生物多样性有限，以及微生物社区的组成和多样性如何在家庭内的不同地点变化。在这里，我们研究了美国北卡罗来纳州北卡罗来纳州北卡罗来纳州北卡罗来纳州北卡罗来纳州的四十家的九个不同地点的细菌社区多样性。我们发现，每个采样的位置都有与彼此不同的细菌社区，该表面与通常清洗的表面常规清洁的表面，通常含有低于近似清洁的表面。细菌社区的这些特异性特异性差异可以与分散在这些位置上的可能的细菌来源的使用模式和差异直接相关。最后，我们检查了细菌多样性的家庭的可变性是否可归因于室外环境因素，室内栖息地结构或家庭的乘客。我们发现狗的存在对家庭内部多个地点的细菌群落组成具有显着影响，因为狗占据了更多不同的社区和更高的犬相关细菌分类群。此外，我们发现沉积在家庭外面的细菌类型和家庭内部的细菌之间的显着相关性，突出显示来自家庭外部的微生物可以直接影响生活在家庭内的表面上的微生物社区。这项工作共同提供了对家庭中发现的微生物社区的第一次综合分析以及塑造家庭内部和之间这些社区结构的因素。