Thank you!!

Thanks to labmate and co-author @quevan.bsky.social , additional co-authors and my PI @contaminatedsci.bsky.social ! 4/4

Metagenomics enabled the surprising observation that common vaginal microbiome member Gardnerella (but not Lactobacillus) made up at >10% of the low biomass lower leg skin microbiome of 4/8 female subjects. 3/4

In high biomass samples, sequencing methods are comparable – however, as biomass decreases, minor taxa are rapidly lost with 16S as the limited amplicon library becomes biased towards the most abundant taxon. 2/4

In high biomass samples, sequencing methods are comparable – however, as biomass decreases, minor taxa are rapidly lost with 16S as the limited amplicon library becomes biased towards the most abundant taxon. 2/4

Staph is so sticky!! Once thought I had suddenly forgotten how to make dilutions when CFU plating (for an OD/CFU curve) reps were terrible - nope just so sticky I had to use washed culture to get CFUs that were actually single cells dropping onto a plate

👋 yeah I've been trying to "just move to industry" for a year so uh good luck with that

Thanks! I'll have to check out what it's doing on cheese.
I don't know about most labs - but in our facility we can routinely recover S. xylosus both from the hairy, healthy skin of mice housed in the facility and from surfaces (lab benches, housing racks).

Thanks! I would add to what Tami said that we applied the bacteria (including E coli and L reuteri) every day - so even if they were at a disadvantage for survival on mouse skin, they were grown up in lab and reapplied daily and still did not delay healing

 Bonus: Neither E. coli nor L. reuteri delayed healing, indicating this phenotype is limited to skin commensals!

Thanks to co-first Veda Khadka, and co-author Magalie Boucher, PI @contaminatedsci.bsky.social and Lieberman Lab for feedback! [3/3]

The answer: not when the skin is damaged! We tested multiple bacterial species, including mouse commensal S. xylosus, C. accolens, and 3 different isolates of S. epidermidis.All delayed healing when applied to abraded mouse flank skin. [2/3]