Nature sub-journal reminds you: kitchen sponges are a gathering place for microorganisms

In a series of experiments, the scientists showed how different microbial species affect each other's population dynamics, depending on factors such as complexity and size of their structural environment

Soil provides this optimal mixed housing environment, as does your kitchen sponge

Biomedical engineers at Duke University say their findings suggest that industries that use bacteria for tasks such as cleaning up pollution or producing commercial products should take the structural environment into account

Germs are like people who have lived through an outbreak, some people are hard to isolate while others thrive

Microbial communities are mixed to varying degrees throughout nature

But when humans throw many bacterial species together into an unstructured goo to produce commodities such as alcohol, biofuels and drugs, it's often in a single dish or even a vat

The researchers barcoded about 80 different E.

Regardless of habitat size, the results were the same

"Small amounts of food do harm species that depend on interactions with other species to survive, while large amounts wipe out species that suffer from those interactions (loneliness)," You said

The findings provide a framework for researchers studying different bacterial communities to begin testing what structural environments are best for their studies

To demonstrate this, the researchers also experimented with a common household sponge

"It turns out that sponges are a very simple way to achieve multilevel distribution and boost the overall microbial community, and maybe that's why it's such a dirty thing -- the structure of the sponge just creates a perfect home for the microbes

Journal Reference :

1. Feilun Wu, Yuanchi Ha, Andrea Weiss, Meidi Wang, Jeffrey Letourneau, Shangying Wang, Nan Luo, Shuquan Huang, Charlotte T.