Roller derby contact leads to mixing of teams' skin microbes

EUGENE, Ore. — (March 12, 2013) — Human skin is home to countless microorganisms that we can't see, but these microbes help to define who we are. These invisible passengers — known as the skin microbiome — contribute to health in such ways as educating the immune system, protecting people from pathogens and mediating skin disorders.

Jessica Green swabs a skin sample from a roller derby team memberIn a new study, University of Oregon researchers investigated how the skin microbiome is transmitted between players in a contact sport, using roller derby as their model system.

The skin is the largest organ and an important barrier that regulates microbial entry into the human body. Despite the importance of the skin ecosystem, little is known about the forces that shape microbial structure and composition in the skin environment, say researchers in the UO's Biology and the Built Environment Center directed by UO biologist Jessica Green, a former skater for the Emerald City Roller Girls in Eugene.

Green and colleagues hypothesized that contact sports could represent an ideal setting for studying how human-to-human interactions influences microbial ecosystems, and they chose the world of roller derby to explore how touching affects microbial transfer among athletes. The project was conducted at a roller derby tournament hosted by the Eugene-based team.

View the video "Talk Derby to Me" about the project

DNA analysis revealed that bacterial communities predict team membership, with teammates sharing distinct microbial communities. However, when opposing teams competed in an hour-long bout their microbial communities became significantly more similar.

James MeadowsThe study was published in the journal PeerJ, a new London- and San Francisco-based peer-reviewed, open-access journal in which all articles are freely available. James F. Meadow, a postdoctoral researcher in the Biology and the Built Environment Center, led the project.

The idea of working with local athletes was sparked by co-author Keith Herkert while he was working on his undergraduate honors thesis project in Green's lab. Herkert, who was in the UO's Robert D. Clark Honors College when the research was conducted, is now pursuing an advanced degree in dentistry at Oregon Health and Science University. Teams involved in the study were Emerald City Roller Girls, DC Roller Girls from Washington, D.C., and the Silicon Valley Roller Girls from San Jose, Calif., all of which represented geographically separate groups.

Differences among the teams' unique skin microbiomes — determined by pre- and post-game swabs taken from exposed upper arms — were driven in part "by the presence of unique indicator taxa that are commonly associated with human skin, gut, mouth and respiratory tract."

Brevibacterium, for example, was found to be the strongest indicator for the DC Roller Girls. The microbial communities on the host team more closely resembled surface samples taken from the Eugene roller rink.

The mixing of bacterial communities during a bout was likely the result of skin-to-skin contact. "Human-to-human contact is the most parsimonious interpretation for the significant changes in skin microbiome we observed," the researchers concluded. Scientists have long known that bacteria can spread among people through direct contact.

This study is the first to illustrate the promise of using contact sports to understand how human interactions can influence our microbiome.

The research team noted that population growth is likely to increase the rate of person-to-person contact in expanding urban areas. Studying skin ecosystems, they wrote, could have implications for health care, disease transmission and general understanding of urban environmental microbiology.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (award number 2010-5-22 IEC) and the University of Oregon supported the research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Co-authors with Green, who also is affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and an academic editor for the journal, Meadows and Herkert were Ashley C. Bateman, a graduate student in the center and the UO Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Timothy K. O'Connor, a former technician in the UO center.

(This story was a collaborative effort between the UO Office of Strategic Communications and the journal PeerJ, which announced the study's findings.)

Media Contacts: Jim Barlow, director of science and research communications, University of Oregon, 541-346-3481, jebarlow@uoregon.edu; PeerJ public affairs, 415-413-4596, press@peerj.com

Sources: James Meadow, postdoctoral researcher, Biology and the Built Environment Center, 406-370-7157, jfmeadow@gmail.com, and Jessica Green, director, Biology and the Built Environment Center, jlgreen@uoregon.edu

Other Links:
Follow UO Science on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UniversityOfOregonScience
UO Science on Twitter: http://twitter.com/UO_Research
More UO Science/Research News: http://uoresearch.uoregon.edu