Jenna M. Lang edited Results.md  over 8 years ago

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There were no apparent biogeographical patterns on the ISS surfaces. That is, there were no significant differences between samples obtained from the different modules (crew vs lab) or different surface types (keyboards, vents, or handheld mics). This can be visualized in Figure NMDS_ISS_only, in which each point represents one of the 15 samples, and the distance between samples indicates the overall difference in community composition. In Panel A, the metric used to calculate the distance between samples is the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity, and in Panel B, an alternative distance metric (Unifrac) is used, which takes into account the phylogenetic distance between the OTUs in samples. For the most part, all 15 samples form a tight cluster on the NMDS plots, but there is one sample, the starboard crew vent, that appears distinct from all of the other samples in Panel A. In Panel B, that same sample, as well as the aft lab vent sample appear separate from the others. In order to visualize which OTUs are contributing the most to the uniqueness of those samples, we looked at the overall distribution of the most abundant bacterial families in those samples. The three most abundant families in the starboard crew vent sample are Bacteroidaceae, Ruminococcaceae, and Verrumicrobiaceae (comprising 60.1% of all sequences); and the three most abundant families in the aft lab vent sample are Rikenellaceae, Bacteroidales S24-7, and Lactobacillaceae (comprising 60% of all sequences). In Figure ISS_only_SP78_abundant, the relative abundance of these six families in all 15 samples from the ISS provides a clear indication that they are driving the distinctiveness of those two samples.   ##Comparison to the microbial communities of homes on Earth  The ISS Unlike the ISS, homes on Earth are exposed to a variety of sources of microbes, including the outside air, tracked-in soil, plants, and pets.   ##Comparison to the microbial communities of homes on Earth and from the Human Microbiome Project  To put the microbial communities that we found on ISS surfaces in the context of homes on Earth, we compared them to the communities found by citizen scientists when they swabbed nine surfaces throughout 40 homes, as part of the "Wildlife of Our Homes" project. We found that the ISS homes and Earth homes were significantly different from each other, both based on the Bray-Curtis (adonis, R^2=0.0666, P=0.001) and the phylogenetic Unifrac distance (adonis, R^2=0.04189, P=0.001). These differences can be visualized in the ordination plots in Figure NMDSnoHMP A and B. It is perhaps not surprising that  Because the ISS surfaces were significantly different from those found on surfaces in homes on Earth, and the dominant source of microbes on the ISS is presumably the human microbiome, we hypothesized that the microbial communities of the ISS surfaces might be more similar to human-associated microbial communities than Earth home surfaces. To test this hypothesis, we obtained 16S rDNA sequence data for 100 random samples from each of 13 body sites from the HMP Data Portal (http://hmpdacc.org/HM16STR/)\cite{Huttenhower_2012}\cite{Gevers_2012}. The microbial communities associated with the ISS, Earth homes, and the HMP samples were significantly different from each other (R^2 = 0.08, P < 0.001).