It’s a regular Wednesday morning, and some of you reading this might be sitting in your office
It’s a regular Wednesday morning, and some of you reading this might be sitting in your office, sipping coffee, just trying to get through your morning workload. You might be sitting in a cubicle, surrounded by coworkers, or you might have your own office, but we’re here to remind you that you’re never truly alone at work - we share our office chairs and keyboards with microbes, and breathe the same office air as them! Don’t take out your sanitizer just yet, because, after all, not all microbes are harmful! In fact, they are a big part of our environment. We’ve all heard of microbiomes in the gut that are specific to the individual - but now there are reported, scientific findings that show that microbiomes also exist in the office. According to studies conducted by Gregory Caporaso and his team at Northern Arizona University, every office environment has a microbiome that’s specific to its location. The specificity is the result of varied external environments. The study was conducted in nine offices across Flagstaff, San Dieog, and Toronto, all chosen for their varied climates. Collection plates were installed in offices in each of these cities, and the plates were covered in materials such as carpet, tile, and drywall to test for microbial differences across materials. Researchers then discovered that there were no differences in bacterial communities across materials, but that their location in a particular room did matter. Overall, samples taken from offices in the same city were more similar to one another than samples from other cities. This is mostly a result of the external environment, such as climate, vegetation, and industry.It remains to be discovered whether some microbiomes are making us unhealthier than others. However, we could potentially use this knowledge to make our environments healthier by engineering healthier microbiomes. This technology might sound like science fiction, but, then again, just 15 years ago, so did smartphones! Read more about cities and their unique microbes here. -- source link
#science#microbiology#microbiome#office life#office germs#cities#microbes