Anatomy promotes neutral coexistence of strains in the human skin microbiome.

ABSTRACT: What enables strains of the same species to coexist in a microbiome? Here, we investigate whether host anatomy can explain strain co-residence of Cutibacterium acnes, the most abundant species on human skin. We reconstruct on-person evolution and migration using whole-genome sequencing of C. acnes colonies acquired from healthy subjects, including from individual skin pores, and find considerable spatial structure at the level of pores. Although lineages (sets of colonies separated by <100 mutations) with in vitro fitness differences coexist within centimeter-scale regions, each pore is dominated by a single lineage. Moreover, colonies from a pore typically have identical genomes. An absence of adaptive signatures suggests a genotype-independent source of low within-pore diversity. We ther

SUBMITTER: Conwill A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8831475 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature