Cohabiting family members share microbiota with one another and with their dogs

By S. Song, C. Lauber, E. Costello, Catherine A. Lozupone, Gregory Humphrey, Donna berg-Lyons, J. Gregory Caporaso, Dan Knights, José Carlos Clemente, S. Nakielny and 3 more. eLife, 2013

1,009 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Human-associated microbial communities vary across individuals: possible contributing factors include (genetic) relatedness, diet, and age. However, our surroundings, including individuals with whom we interact, also likely shape our microbial communities. To quantify this microbial exchange, we surveyed fecal, oral, and skin microbiota from 60 families (spousal units with children, dogs, both, or neither). Household members, particularly couples, shared more of their microbiota than individuals from different households, with stronger effects of co-habitation on skin than oral or fecal microbiota. Dog ownership significantly increased the shared skin microbiota in cohabiting adults, and dog-owning adults shared more ‘skin’ microbiota with their own dogs than with other dogs. Although the degree to which these shared microbes have a true niche on the human body, vs transient detection after direct contact, is unknown, these results suggest that direct and frequent contact with our cohabitants may significantly shape the composition of our microbial communities. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00458.001

Subfields: Dermatology, Genetics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/17b5457cc8990ecba9becf9ea0ba292d56cf8988

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Citations in the corpus

Gut Microbiome: Profound Implications for Diet and Disease (2019, background): “An earlier study showed that household dogs primarily alter their owner’s skin microbiota rather than the gut microbiota [225].”
A microbial clock provides an accurate estimate of the postmortem interval in a mouse model system (2013, background): “DOI: 10.7554/eLife.01104 8 of 19 Research article which they are in contact (Costello et al., 2009; Song et al., 2013), and this convergence may also arise because the low biomass initially found on the skin is easily overwhelmed by soil taxa.”
Social behavior and the microbiome (2015, background): “the oral cavity, the vagina, the cloaca, and scent glands) suggests that the pattern may be widespread across body sites [12,24,25 ,28].”
American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research (2018, background): “Recent reports suggest that the microbes of human bodies (8), like those of homes”
Microbial reconstitution reverses maternal diet-induced social and synaptic deficits in offspring (2016, neutral): “, 2012), co-housed family members are known to share their microbiota (Song et al., 2013).”
Phylogenetic Placement of Exact Amplicon Sequences Improves Associations with Clinical Information (2018, background): “The Family study (25) comprised 854 human samples and 217 dog samples of three body products from a westernized population.”
Role of the microbiome in human development (2019, background): “…child, and which maternal strains colonise which parts of the baby’s body and their functions, the paternal and sibling contribution along with the infant’s microbial diversity 33 and the extent to which modern practices reduce intergenerational transmission, are still not completely understood.”