Our interface with the built environment: immunity and the indoor microbiota

doi:10.1016/j.it.2015.01.001

Trends in Immunology

Volume 36, Issue 3, March 2015, Pages 121-123

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.it.2015.01.001 Get rights and content

The rise of urbanization and an increasingly indoor lifestyle has affected human interactions with our microbiota in unprecedented ways. We discuss how this lifestyle may influence immune development and function, and argue that it is time that we examined ways to manipulate the indoor environment to increase our exposure to a wider phylogeny of microorganisms. An important step is to continue to engage citizen scientists in the efforts to characterize our interactions with the diverse microbial environments that we inhabit.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Alfred P Sloan Foundation for funding the Hospital Microbiome Project.

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Trends in Immunology

Science & SocietyOur interface with the built environment: immunity and the indoor microbiota

Section snippets

Acknowledgments

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Our interface with the built environment: immunity and the indoor microbiota