Without exposure to nature and its microbes, our immune system dos not function as it should. Mira Grönroos, community ecologist at the University of Helsinki, is interested in how spending time in the forest and connecting with nature affect the skin microbiota. One study increased the interaction between daycare children and natural microbiota. The studies showed, for the first time in the world, that the children’s immune system regulation changed while they were in contact with the diverse microbiota of natural materials.
The microbiota collected from sand, skin and gut was sequenced. The study examined how the microbiota changed between the test group and control group. In the study, the gene region of 16S ribosomal RNA (16S rRNA) was sequenced and the bioinformatics was carried out with the resources of Finnish ELIXIR Node, CSC – IT Center for Science. The 16S gene regions have remained unchanged for millions of years of bacterial evolution, which is why they can be used to identify different species.
The samples taken from the children’s skin helped identify the composition of the bacterial community, i.e. the metagenome. The relative amount of more than 30 bacterial genera increased on the children’s skin. The increase in the amount of immune-boosting gammaproteobacteria was connected to a change in interleukin-17A, which is associated with the development of allergies and immune-mediated diseases.
“Efficient sequencing methods and the data they generate are vital for studying microbial diversity and its impacts. Cultivation methods alone aren’t enough for studying things like this,” Grönroos says.
Next-generation sequencing technology enables the simultaneous sequencing of millions or even billions of DNA segments in a sample.
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