Researchers Uncover Factors that Influence People's Microbial Communities

Researchers find that gender, education level, and breastfeeding can affect humans’ commensal microbial communities.

Written byJef Akst

| 2 min read

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A crowd of abstract multicolored silhouettes of people made in the collage style, signifying microbial communities that differ in people.

A number of factors influence the microbial communities that people harbor.

Image credit:© iStock.com, Pandagolik

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The human microbiome is essential to health, and its disruption can lead to disease. Now, using data from the Human Microbiome Project (HMP), which has sampled the microbial communities of 300 healthy people at 18 body sites and analyzed additional samples from the same individuals, Patrick Schloss and Tao Ding of the University of Michigan have found that specific life-history events—namely, gender, education, and whether a person was breastfed as an infant—affected the composition of the body’s microbiomes as an adult. They published their results last week (April 16) in Nature.¹

“If a certain community of bacteria is associated with a specific life history trait, it is not such a stretch to imagine that there may be microbiome communities associated with illnesses such as cancer,” Schloss told The Conversation. Of course, he added, such correlations do not necessarily point to the cause of the microbiome differences between individuals. “We really ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
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Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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