Changes in Microbes of the Built Environment in Early Stages of Urbanization

Funding agency: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Researchers: Dominguez, M.G. (PI), Cavallin, H.

Students: Edwin de la Cruz, Irene Fajardo

“Little attention has been paid to the microbes that live in buildings, and the effect of forms of construction throughout the evolution of lifestyles from pre-modern hunter-gathers to modern cities. This project will fill this gap by studying the environmental microbes in houses in a gradient of acculturation, from remote ancestral lifestyle villages in the Amazon to modern urban houses, and determine microbial transmission between the skin and objects and surfaces of the home.  We propose to determine bacterial and fungal taxonomic and metagenomic composition of the surfaces and objects (10 per home) and the skin of the home inhabitants (10 samples) in 10 homes from 4 communities, with different degrees of Westernization, from remote Amerindian villages to urban modern houses in Peru.”