Urbanization leads to change in type of bacteria in the home

Scientists traveled from remote villages in Peru to a large Brazilian city to begin tracking the effects of urbanization on the diversity of bacteria in people's homes.

"Very little is known about the microbes of the built environment," microbiologist Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello of New York University, who led the pilot study, said at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

[...] in city dwellings, the researchers could tell just by the microbial fingerprints of the walls that this is a kitchen or this is a bathroom or this is a living room.

Everyone carries a customized set of microbes on the skin, in the nose and in the gut, a microbial zoo that starts forming at birth and help with such things as digestion and immune development.

To track the effects of urbanization, Dominguez-Bello's team analyzed the microbial communities of 10 houses and their inhabitants from each of three Peruvian locations — a village of hunter-gatherers, a slightly more modern rural village and Iquitos, a medium-sized city not accessible by roads — and the contemporary Brazilian city of Manaus.