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  • OUTLOOK

Skin microbiota’s community effort

Each person’s skin carries a unique population of microbes that might help to protect skin from infection, or increase its vulnerability.
  1. Emily Sohn

    1. Emily Sohn is a freelance journalist in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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In December 2012, two months before the opening of a new, ten-storey hospital building in Chicago, Illinois, Jack Gilbert and his team descended with cotton swabs. In ten seemingly empty hospital rooms and at two nurse stations, they took samples from bed rails, floors and other surfaces to test for microbial life that had already moved in. After the building opened, the team returned again and again, taking samples — including from hands, armpits and other body parts of patients — as often as once a day.

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Nature 563, S91-S93 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07432-8

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Skin, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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