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Skin microbiome alters attractiveness to Anopheles mosquitoes

Showering, Alicia; Martinez, Julien; Benavente, Ernest Diez; Gezan, Salvador A.; Jones, Robert T.; Oke, Catherine; Tytheridge, Scott; Pretorius, Elizabeth; Scott, Darren; Allen, Rachel L.; D’Alessandro, Umberto; Lindsay, Steve W.; Armour, John A.L.; Pickett, John; Logan, James G.

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Authors

Alicia Showering

Julien Martinez

Ernest Diez Benavente

Salvador A. Gezan

Robert T. Jones

Catherine Oke

Scott Tytheridge

Elizabeth Pretorius

Darren Scott

Rachel L. Allen

Umberto D’Alessandro

John A.L. Armour

John Pickett

James G. Logan



Abstract

Background: Some people produce specifc body odours that make them more attractive than others to mosquitoes, and consequently are at higher risk of contracting vector-borne diseases. The skin microbiome can break down carbohydrates, fatty acids and peptides on the skin into volatiles that mosquitoes can differentiate. Results: Here, we examined how skin microbiome composition of women differs in relation to level of attractiveness to Anopheles coluzzii mosquitoes, to identify volatiles in body odour and metabolic pathways associated with individuals that tend to be poorly-attractive to mosquitoes. We used behavioural assays to measure attractiveness of participants to An. Coluzzii mosquitoes, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of the bacteria sampled from the skin and gas chromatography of volatiles in body odour. We found differences in skin microbiome composition between the poorly- and highly-attractive groups, particularly eight Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) belonging to the Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Firmicutes phyla. Staphylococcus 2 ASVs are four times as abundant in the highly-attractive compared to poorly-attractive group. Associations were found between these ASVs and volatiles known to be attractive to Anopheles mosquitoes. Propanoic pathways are enriched in the poorly-attractive participants compared to those found to be highly-attractive. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that variation in attractiveness of people to mosquitoes is related to the composition of the skin microbiota, knowledge that could improve odour-baited traps or other next generation vector control tools. Keywords: Malaria, Body odour, Skin microbiome, Anopheles coluzzii, Mosquitoes, Human attractiveness, Repellents, Diversity.

Citation

Showering, A., Martinez, J., Benavente, E. D., Gezan, S. A., Jones, R. T., Oke, C., …Logan, J. G. (2022). Skin microbiome alters attractiveness to Anopheles mosquitoes. BMC Microbiology, 22(1), https://doi.org/10.1186/s12866-022-02502-4

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 21, 2022
Online Publication Date Apr 11, 2022
Publication Date 2022
Deposit Date May 30, 2022
Publicly Available Date May 30, 2022
Journal BMC Microbiology
Publisher BioMed Central
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 22
Issue 1
DOI https://doi.org/10.1186/s12866-022-02502-4

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.





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