Department of Biological Sciences, Butler University, Indianapolis, IN, USA.
Center for Urban Ecology and Sustainability, Butler University, Indianapolis, IN, USA.
Lett Appl Microbiol. 2020 Aug;71(2):134-137. doi: 10.1111/lam.13316. Epub 2020 Jun 2.
As humans become increasingly urban and spend more time inside the built environment, there will be increased interactions between humans and shared public surface microbiomes. Recent cultural changes in the United States have led to increased numbers of gender-neutral bathrooms. Given that bathroom surfaces are frequently sanitized, we used this increased availability of gender-neutral bathrooms to examine how single-gender or gender-neutral surfaces are recolonized with microbes. Given that male and female microbiomes vary, we hypothesized that rates of recolonization would differ between male, female and gender-neutral bathroom surfaces. We collected swabs from common hand-contacted surfaces in bathrooms and cultured microbes on selective and rich media to determine microbial abundance after cleaning. Recolonization was dominated by Gram-positive bacteria and was slowest on male, intermediate on female and fastest on gender-neutral surfaces. These results imply that gender-neutral surfaces approach normal climax microbial communities more quickly than single-gender bathrooms. SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT OF THE STUDY: Humans now spend substantial amount of time within the built environment, and as a consequence the human microbiome interacts frequently with indoor surfaces. Social changes are making gender-neutral public bathrooms more common, so it is important to study how humans and microbiomes interact with these bathroom surfaces. We found that the gender-neutral bathroom surfaces recolonize more quickly than single-gender, which suggests that there are more potential human-surface microbiome connections in these public spaces. These results will potentially add a new layer to our understanding of the interactions of humans, our microbiomes and how we design our built environment.
随着人类越来越城市化，更多时间在建筑环境中度过，人类与共享公共表面微生物组之间的相互作用将会增加。美国最近的文化变化导致中性浴室的数量增加。鉴于浴室表面经常进行消毒，我们利用中性浴室增加的可用性来研究单性别或中性性别浴室表面是如何重新被微生物占据的。由于男性和女性的微生物组不同，我们假设在男性、女性和中性性别浴室表面上，重新定殖的速度会有所不同。我们从浴室常见的手接触表面采集拭子，并在选择性和丰富的培养基上培养微生物，以确定清洁后的微生物丰度。再定殖主要由革兰氏阳性菌主导，男性表面最慢，女性表面中等，中性性别表面最快。这些结果表明，中性性别表面比单性别浴室更快地接近正常的微生物群落。这项研究的影响意义：人类现在在建筑环境中花费大量时间，因此人类微生物组经常与室内表面相互作用。社会变革使得中性公共浴室变得更加普遍，因此研究人类和微生物组如何与这些浴室表面相互作用非常重要。我们发现中性性别浴室表面比单性别浴室表面重新定殖的速度更快，这表明在这些公共空间中，人与表面微生物组之间的潜在联系更多。这些结果将有可能为我们理解人类、我们的微生物组以及我们如何设计我们的建筑环境之间的相互作用增添新的认识。
