Abstract
Human skin microbiota plays a crucial role in the defense against pathogens, and is associated with various skin diseases. High elevation is positively correlated with various extreme environmental conditions (i.e., high ultraviolet radiation), which may exert selection pressure on skin microbiota, and therefore influence human health. Most studies regarding skin microbial communities have focused on low-elevation hosts. Few studies have explored skin microbiota in high-elevation humans. Here, we investigated the diversity, function, assembly, and co-occurrence patterns of skin microbiotas from 35 health human subjects across three body sites (forehead, opisthenar, and palm) and seven elevation gradients from 501 to 3431 m. Alpha diversity values (i.e., Shannon diversity and observed operational taxonomic units (OTUs)) decreased with increasing elevation regardless of the body site, while beta diversity (Jaccard and Bray–Curtis dissimilarities) showed an increasing trend with elevation. Elevation is a significant factor that influences human skin microbiota, even after controlling host-related factors. Skin microbiotas at high elevation with more than 3000 m on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, had a significant structural or functional separation from those at low elevation with less than 3000 m. Notably, the clustering coefficient, average degree, and network density were all lower at high-elevation than those at low-elevation, suggesting that high-elevation skin networks were more fragile and less connected. Phylogenetic analysis showed that human skin microbiotas are mainly dominated by stochastic processes (58.4%–74.6%), but skin microbiotas at high-elevation harbor a greater portion of deterministic processes than those at low-elevation, indicating that high-elevation may be conducive to the promotion of deterministic processes. Our results reveal that the filtering and selection of the changeable high-elevation environment on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau may lead to less stable skin microbial community structures.
Highlights
Skin can be regarded as the largest human organ, and as the first important line of defense against external pathogens and toxic substances by secreting antimicrobial peptides, salts, enzymes, lipids, and many other compounds [1]
Our results found that skin microbial diversity decreased with increasing elevation regardless of body sites, indicating that high-elevation humans are possibly linked to a higher prevalence of skin diseases
High-elevation humans may likely be more susceptible to related disease risk
Summary
Skin can be regarded as the largest human organ, and as the first important line of defense against external pathogens and toxic substances by secreting antimicrobial peptides, salts, enzymes, lipids, and many other compounds [1]. Human skin harbors diverse microbial communities, including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses [2,3]. These symbiotic microorganisms play a crucial role in host physiology, such as improving colonization resistance to transient microbes, impacting lipid metabolism, and educating immunity [1,4,5]. Some reports have demonstrated a pivotal function of skin microbial communities in regulating the health and environmental adaptability of humans and animals [12,13,14]. Most of these studies focused on low-elevation hosts. Few studies have explored how human skin microbiota adapts to extreme high-elevation environments
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