title: Walls talk: Microbial biogeography of homes spanning urbanization.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, PR 00931, USA.
authors.forename: Jean F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Ruiz-Calderon
authors.affiliation: School of Architecture, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, PR 00931, USA.
authors.forename: Humberto
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cavallin
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
authors.forename: Se Jin
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0750-5709
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
authors.forename: Atila
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Novoselac
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, PR 00931, USA.
authors.forename: Luis R
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-7096-3596
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Pericchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, PR 00931, USA.
authors.forename: Jean N
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Hernandez
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, PR 00931, USA.
authors.forename: Rafael
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4727-7309
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rios
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY 10016, USA.
authors.forename: Oralee H
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6720-6906
authors.initials: OH
authors.lastname: Branch
authors.affiliation: Federal University of Amazonas, Manaus, AM 66077-000, Brazil.
authors.forename: Henrique
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Pereira
authors.affiliation: Center for Natural Sciences and Humanities, Federal University of ABC, Santo André, SP 09210, Brazil.
authors.forename: Luciana C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Paulino
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY 10016, USA.
authors.forename: Martin J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Blaser
authors.affiliation: Departments of Pediatrics and Computer Science & Engineering, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
authors.forename: Rob
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Knight
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, PR 00931, USA.; Department of Medicine, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY 10016, USA.
authors.forename: Maria G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Dominguez-Bello
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D004783:Environmental Microbiology; D006798:Housing; D006801:Humans; D064307:Microbiota; D058974:Phylogeography; D013020:South America; D014507:Urbanization
keywords: Built environment; microbes