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For the past four years, Dunn and two of his colleagues—Noah Fierer, a microbial ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Holly Menninger, the director of public science at N.C. State—have been deciphering these histories, investigating the microorganisms in our dust and how their lives are intertwined with our own.
The scientists began with a small pilot study, recruiting forty families in the Raleigh-Durham area to swab nine locations in their homes. When the researchers analyzed these cotton swabs and sequenced the fragments of bacterial DNA that they contained, they found that even the most sparkling houses were teeming with microbial squatters—more than two thousand distinct types, on average. Different rooms formed distinct ecological niches: kitchens were popular among the bacteria that grow on produce, whereas bedroom and bathroom surfaces were colonized by those that typically dwell on the skin. (In a troubling discovery, Dunn and his colleagues learned that, from a microbiological perspective, toilet seats and pillowcases look strikingly similar.)
The fungi in the dust of your house tell where you live, the bacteria tell who lives there.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:38PM
In a troubling discovery, Dunn and his colleagues learned that, from a microbiological perspective, toilet seats and pillowcases look strikingly similar.
There is no difference between the skin on your glutes (the part that touches the seat) and skin on your face, so unless you are shitting and pissing all over your toilet seat or you can't wipe properly between uses I don't see how this is troubling at all.
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:51PM
"There is no difference between the skin on your glutes (the part that touches the seat) and skin on your face,"
Lips and eyes are on my face and they're regularly in contact with the pillow. I would say they're rather different from the skin on my butt.
I'm actually surprised that pillowcases don't have much more bacteria, as people drool on the pillow and keep it generally humid and warm for 8 h per day. Toilet seats don't hold moisture and are therefore more hostile to bacteria.
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:29PM
I don't think they evaluated quantity, they merely contain similar proportions of the same kinds of bacteria. Which makes sense as since they come from the same place: skin.
(Score: 2) by computersareevil on Thursday November 12 2015, @06:04PM
I'm glad to hear my pillow is as clean as my toilet seat!
Other studies have found that the toilet seat is the cleanest fixture in a bathroom.
"It's one of the cleanest things you'll run across in terms of micro-organisms," he says. "It's our gold standard - there are not many things cleaner than a toilet seat when it comes to germs."
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20324304 [bbc.com]