BioProject

Extreme habitats are not only limited to natural environments; they exist also in our homes. More...

Extreme habitats are not only limited to natural environments; they exist also in our homes. Household appliances, such as dishwashers provide favorable environment for colonization of human opportunistic fungi, primarily inhabiting dishwasher rubber seals. Therefore metagenomic analyses of biofilms from the rubber seals of the dishwasher (N=30) used on daily basis were sampled by scraping the surface of the rubber seals using a sterile scalpel. Additionally, the biofilm was also sampled from a single dishwasher that had not been used for a year and had been stored in a cool, dry place and not connected to the water supply system, using the same technique. Collected biomass was extracted to obtain total environmental DNA and target loci ITS2 rRNA was amplified using 454 pyrosequencing platform. The results obtained show that large spectrum of medically relevant fungi are present on dishwasher rubber seal, therefore dishwasher represents a reservoir of enriched opportunistic pathogenic species that can spread from the dishwasher into the indoor biome and become a threat to human health. Less...