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

PLoS One. 2015 Oct 28;10(10):e0141842. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141842. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Age Factors
  • Bacteria / classification
  • Bacteria / genetics
  • Biodiversity
  • Child
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Computational Biology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Metagenome
  • Microbiota*
  • Middle Aged
  • Public Health Surveillance
  • Rural Population*
  • Sex Factors
  • Skin / microbiology*
  • Urban Population*
  • Young Adult

Associated data

  • SRA/SRP051059

Grants and funding

This work was supported by a grant from Johnson & Johnson (China). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The funder provided support in the form of salaries for investigator/authors [YT, CG], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. Editorial services were provided by Evidence Scientific Solutions (Philadelphia, PA) and were funded by Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies, Inc. (Skillman, NJ USA).