Bacteria on Classroom Surfaces Vary with Human Contact
Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
The microorganisms inside the built environment often come from the occupants inside- mostly humans, pets, and plants. How we shape and operate the spaces in that built environment, and how we use the materials within that space, can affect the community of microorganisms living in a particular area. By taking swab samples of multiple surfaces in a university classroom, we found that the bacterial communities on were different based on the surface, and this difference was driven by a number of bacterial species. In particular, we found that bacteria on surfaces in classrooms reflect how we use them– desks strongly resembled the bacterial communities found on skin, chairs reflected bacterial communities typical of both the gut and the vagina, and floor surfaces were a combination of human skin-associated and outdoor-associated bacteria, the latter presumably tracked in on shoes and clothing
