There Is No Me In Team, But There Is A Microbiome

Your microbiome –the 100 trillion microbes that inhabit your body– is your friend. It tunes your immune system, protects you from pathogens, and works for you more often than against you. Much of your microbiome lives happily in your gut, and a good part–some scientists think as many as 5,000 species of bacteria–lives in your mouth. Much of it also lives on your skin, and the composition of that part depends largely on who you run into, literally. When researchers at the University of Oregon recently decided to find out how the microbiome ecosystem on our skin in influenced by contact with other people, they used a roller derby team as the model. A U of Oregon news release reports that a DNA analysis revealed that bacterial communities are so similar that they can predict team membership. Brevibacterium, for example, was found to be the strongest indicator for the DC Roller Girls, whose microbial communities closely resembled surface samples taken from the Eugene roller rink. The researchers also found that an hour-long derby with another team was sufficient to make the two teams microbial communities significantly more similar than it had been before the match, as a result of skin to skin contact. Read more from the University of Oregon.