Quaranskin, a word derived by the combination of Quarantine and Skin, is a project that brings together all the components to collect and analyze the skin microbiome samples collected from participants across Europe. Within this study, we aimed to investigate the impact of behavioral factors such as hygiene, exercise, and social interaction, on the composition of the human skin microbiome.
Study Pipeline
Participants recruitment
Emails are sent to European citizens and iGEMers, focusing on people whose countries where subject to social restrictions due to the pandemic. The expected number of participants is 70.
Participants enrollment
Each participant has to fill a participation form and sign a consent form to be part of the study. After signing up to participate in the study, they are asked to create an account on a platform called Open Humans. Open Humans is a community-based platform that enables personal data collections across data streams, giving individuals more personal data access and control of sharing authorizations, and enabling academic research as well as patient-led projects.
Participants are sent a link allowing them to create an account on the Open Humans platform that will generate an eight digit unique ID for each of them. This unique ID helps preserve anonymity of the participants in the study.
Participants action
Once officially enrolled in the study, each participant is shipped a kit containing all the tools needed to sample their skin microbiome from 4 body sites. In parallel, the participants are asked to answer an online questionnaire with questions covering 4 main topics: personal characteristic (age, sex, nationality, etc.), hygiene habits, level of confinement and potential skin disorders.
Microbiome sequencing
Samples are then sent to a sequencing company (Genewiz). Bacterial DNA extraction is performed from the samples, before amplification of the V3-V4 regions of the 16S RNA gene, and sequencing of the amplicons.
Statistical analysis
The results from composition and diversity analyses will be correlated to the questionnaires, to unveil any trend between the microbiome composition and characteristics of the lifestyle or skin disorders.
Data Analysis
1. Correlations between microbiome diversity and indexes of hygiene, personal information, and level of social restriction
The microbiomes in the generated database are grouped by index values in each of these 3 categories. By setting two indices, we can study the impact of the third element on the diversity of the microbiome.
2. Identify environmental factors influencing the proportions of Staphylococci
A proportion threshold is defined and all individuals with a staphylococcal population above this threshold are isolated. Finally, we look for parameters common to these individuals.
3. Investigate eczematic people’s microbiome
We want to compare a typical composition of eczematic microbiome, found in the literature, to data collected from our subjects.
4. Analyse data based on common symptoms
When a significant number of people present the same symptom, independently of the environment and lifestyle, we want to make a synthesis of the microbiome composition related to this symptom.