Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, PR 00931, USA.
School of Architecture, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, PR 00931, USA.
Sci Adv. 2016 Feb 12;2(2):e1501061. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1501061. eCollection 2016 Feb.
Westernization has propelled changes in urbanization and architecture, altering our exposure to the outdoor environment from that experienced during most of human evolution. These changes might affect the developmental exposure of infants to bacteria, immune development, and human microbiome diversity. Contemporary urban humans spend most of their time indoors, and little is known about the microbes associated with different designs of the built environment and their interaction with the human immune system. This study addresses the associations between architectural design and the microbial biogeography of households across a gradient of urbanization in South America. Urbanization was associated with households' increased isolation from outdoor environments, with additional indoor space isolation by walls. Microbes from house walls and floors segregate by location, and urban indoor walls contain human bacterial markers of space use. Urbanized spaces uniquely increase the content of human-associated microbes-which could increase transmission of potential pathogens-and decrease exposure to the environmental microbes with which humans have coevolved.
西方化推动了城市化和建筑的变革，改变了我们在户外环境中的暴露程度，而这种暴露程度在人类进化的大部分时间里是没有的。这些变化可能会影响婴儿在发育过程中接触细菌、免疫发育和人类微生物组多样性的情况。当代城市居民大部分时间都在室内度过，对于与不同建筑环境设计相关的微生物及其与人体免疫系统的相互作用，我们知之甚少。本研究旨在探讨建筑设计与南美洲城市化梯度范围内家庭微生物地理学之间的关系。城市化与家庭与户外环境的隔离程度增加有关，墙壁进一步隔离了室内空间。房屋墙壁和地板上的微生物根据位置而分离，城市室内墙壁含有人类空间利用的细菌标志物。城市空间独特地增加了人类相关微生物的含量——这可能会增加潜在病原体的传播——并减少了与人类共同进化的环境微生物的接触。
