Principal investigators
Matt Gebert; Noah Fierer
Funding
CIRES; CIRES Innovative Research Project grant
Collaboration + support
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; BioFrontiers Institute; North Carolina State University; National Jewish Health; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Every time you hop in the shower, you are in the company of millions of microorganisms, most of which probably won鈥檛 hurt you.听
However, researchers from the have identified Mycobacterium as the most abundant genus of bacteria growing in the slimy 鈥渂iofilm鈥� that lines the inside of showerheads. Some of those bacteria can cause lung disease in the immunocompromised.听
Matt Gebert, a CIRES researcher and lead author of the 2018 mBio study, and his colleagues analyzed DNA extracted from slime samples collected from hundreds of citizen scientists鈥� showerheads across the United States and Europe.听
They found that mycobacteria: are more prevalent in the United States than in Europe; thrive more in municipal tap water than in well water; are more abundant in metal showerheads than in plastic ones; and are more common in 鈥渉ot spots鈥� where certain types of lung disease caused by mycobacteria are also common鈥攏amely, parts of Southern California, Florida and New York.