The Influence of Age and Gender on Skin-Associated Microbial Communities in Urban and Rural Human Populations.

Differences in the bacterial community structure associated with 7 skin sites in 71 healthy people over five days showed significant correlations with age, gender, physical skin parameters, and whether participants lived in urban or rural locations in the same city. While body site explained the majority of the variance in bacterial community structure, the composition of the skin-associated bacterial communities were predominantly influenced by whether the participants were living in an urban or rural environment, with a significantly greater relative abundance of Trabulsiella in urban populations. Adults maintained greater overall microbial diversity than adolescents or the elderly, while the intragroup variation among the elderly and rural populations was significantly greater. Skin-associated bacterial community structure and composition could predict whether a sample came from an urban or a rural resident ~5x greater than random.

Analysis of the bacterial communities associated with different drinking water treatment processes.

A drinking water plant was surveyed to determine the bacterial composition of different drinking water treatment processes (DWTP). Water samples were collected from different processing steps in the plant (i.e., coagulation, sedimentation, sand filtration, and chloramine disinfection) and from distantly piped water. The samples were pyrosequensed using sample-specific oligonucleotide barcodes. The taxonomic composition of the microbial communities of different DWTP and piped water was dominated by the phylum Proteobacteria. Additionally, a large proportion of the sequences were assigned to the phyla Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes. The piped water exhibited increasing taxonomic diversity, including human pathogens such as the Mycobacterium, which revealed a threat to the safety of drinking water. Surprisingly, we also found that a sister group of SAR11 (LD12) persisted throughout the DWTP, which was always detected in freshwater aquatic systems. Moreover, Polynucleobacter, Rhodoferax, and a group of Actinobacteria, hgcI clade, were relatively consistent throughout the processes. It is concluded that smaller-size microorganisms tended to survive against the present treatment procedure. More improvement should be made to ensure the long-distance transmission drinking water.

Henriciella marina gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel member of the family Hyphomonadaceae isolated from the East Sea.

A bacterial strain, designated Iso4(T), was isolated from the East Sea of Korea and was subjected to a poly-phasic taxonomy study including phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characteristics as well as 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. Cells of the strain were Gram-negative, motile, non-budding, non-stalked, and strictly aerobic. Strain Iso4(T) grew optimally at 20 degrees C in the presence of 1 approximately 2% (w/v) NaCl and at pH 6.9 approximately 7.6. The major respiratory quinone was Q-10 and the major cellular fatty acids were C(18:1) omega 7c (53.5%), C(17:1) omega 5c (11.7%), C(17:1) omega 6c (8.1%), C(16:0) (7.8%), C(17:0) (4.8%), C(15:0) (2.9%), and C(16:1) omega 5c (2.2%). The DNA G+C content of strain Iso4(T) was 56.2 mol%. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain Iso4(T) formed a monophyletic clade in the family Hyphomonadaceae, supported by high bootstrap value and was most closely related to the genus Hyphomonas (92 approximately 94%), a member of marine bacteria in the family. The phenotypic, genotypic, and chemotaxonomic evidences also suggest strain Iso4(T) represents a novel genus and species in the family Hyphomonadaceae, for which the name Henriciella gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is Iso4(T) (=KCTC 12513(T) =DSM 19595(T) =JCM 15116(T)).