Living with someone changes your microbiome, new research shows

Living with someone changes your microbiome, new research shows

For the first time, research has shown that bacteria of the microbiome are transmitted between many individuals, not just infants and their mothers, in ways that can’t be explained by having the same diet or geography.

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Some roommate frustration can be expected, whether it’s a sink piled high with crusty dishes or crumbs where a clean tabletop should be. Now, research suggests a less familiar issue: person-to-person transmission of shared bacterial strains in our gut and oral microbiomes. For the first time, the lab of Nicola Segata, a professor of genetics and computational biology at the University of Trento, located in Italy, has shown that bacteria of the microbiome are transmitted between many individuals, not just infants and their mothers, in ways that can’t be explained by their shared diet or geography.

It’s a finding with wide-ranging implications, yet frustratingly few predictable outcomes. Our microbiomes are an ever-growing and changing collection of helpful and harmful bacteria that we begin to accumulate the moment we’re born, but experts are still struggling to unravel why and how bacteria from one person’s gut or mouth become established in another person’s microbiome, as opposed to simply passing through.

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Robin Donovan
Robin Donovan is a science journalist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Vice, Neo.Life, The Scientist, Willamette Week and many other outlets.
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National Science Foundation

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Sarah Watts

Sarah Watts is a health and science writer based in Chicago.

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Sabine van Erp / Pixabay

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Matt Fuchs
Matt Fuchs is the host of the Making Sense of Science podcast and served previously as the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org. He writes as a contributor to the Washington Post, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, WIRED, Nautilus Magazine, Fortune Magazine and TIME Magazine. Follow him @fuchswriter.