11 August 2020

New article in Microbiome

Environmental shaping of the bacterial and fungal community in infant bed dust and correlations with the airway microbiota

New article in Microbiome from Section of Microbiology

Microbiome (2020) 8:115 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-020-00895-w

Shashank Gupta, Mathis H. Hjelmsø, Jenni Lehtimäki, Xuanji Li, Martin S. Mortensen, Jakob Russel, Urvish Trivedi, Morten A. Rasmussen, Jakob Stokholm, Hans Bisgaard and Søren J. Sørensen.

This study explores the influence of environmental factors on bed dust microbiota (both bacterialand fungal) and its correlation with airway microbiota (bacterial) in early life using high-throughput sequencing. Our findings demonstrate that bed dust microbiota is influenced by multiple environmental exposures and couldrepresent an interface between environment and child.

a Relative abundance of bacterial phyla in bed dust and airway samples. Phyla with a mean abundance of at least 1% abundance across bed dust samples are represented in colors. b Associations between fungal and bacterial alpha diversity (observed richness and Shannon diversity index values) for a given sample. The shaded gray region represents 95% confidence intervals. Linear regression analysis: p = 2.9e−05, R = 0.17 for observed richness and p = 8.8e−09, R = 0.25 for Shannon diversity
a Relative abundance of bacterial phyla in bed dust and airway samples. Phyla with a mean abundance of at least 1% abundance across bed dust samples are represented in colors. b Associations between fungal and bacterial alpha diversity (observed richness and Shannon diversity index values) for a given sample. The shaded gray region represents 95% confidence intervals. Linear regression analysis: p = 2.9e−05, R = 0.17 for observed richness and p = 8.8e−09, R = 0.25 for Shannon diversity

We evaluate which environmental factors influence the bacterial and fungal composition of the infants’ beds at 6 months after birth. Additionally, we compare bed dust to the bacterial composition of the airwaysat age 3 months. All samples were collected in the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood2010 (COPSAC2010) cohort. Through a comprehensive analysis of the microbiomes in bed dust and early life airways, we aim to elucidate the interactions between the two and secondarily identify the external factors that affect the microbial interactions between bacterial and fungal microbiome. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide detailed qualitative and quantitative descriptions of microbial taxa and diversity in bed dust.

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