Tag Archives: cartography

3D cartographies and histories of the skin

Here’s some ‘skin news’, from a March 30, 2015 University of California at San Diego news release (also on EurekAlert),

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences used information collected from hundreds of skin swabs to produce three-dimensional maps of molecular and microbial variations across the body. These maps provide a baseline for future studies of the interplay between the molecules that make up our skin, the microbes that live on us, our personal hygiene routines and other environmental factors. …

The researchers have produced a video illustrating a ‘skin map’,

Credit for 3D mapping and video: Theodore Alexandrov;
Credit for data collection: Christopher Rath

The news release goes on to explain what makes this work special,

“This is the first study of its kind to characterize the surface distribution of skin molecules and pair that data with microbial diversity,” said senior author Pieter Dorrestein, PhD, professor of pharmacology in the UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy. “Previous studies were limited to select areas of the skin, rather than the whole body, and examined skin chemistry and microbial populations separately.”

To sample human skin nearly in its entirety, Dorrestein and team swabbed 400 different body sites of two healthy adult volunteers, one male and one female, who had not bathed, shampooed or moisturized for three days. They used a technique called mass spectrometry to determine the molecular and chemical composition of the samples. They also sequenced microbial DNA in the samples to identify the bacterial species present and map their locations across the body. The team then used MATLAB software to construct 3D models that illustrated the data for each sampling spot.

Despite the three-day moratorium on personal hygiene products, the most abundant molecular features in the skin swabs still came from hygiene and beauty products, such as sunscreen. According to the researchers, this finding suggests that 3D skin maps may be able to detect both current and past behaviors and environmental exposures. The study also demonstrates that human skin is not just made up of molecules derived from human or bacterial cells. Rather, the external environment, such as plastics found in clothing, diet, hygiene and beauty products, also contribute to the skin’s chemical composition. The maps now allow these factors to be taken into account and correlated with local microbial communities.

“This is a starting point for future investigations into the many factors that help us maintain, or alter, the human skin ecosystem — things like personal hygiene and beauty practices — and how those variations influence our health and susceptibility to disease,” Dorrestein said.

It was somewhat startling to realize clothing becomes part of my skin’s chemical composition rather than protecting it or, where allergies are concerned, affecting it. In effect, this map seems as much history as geography.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Molecular cartography of the human skin surface in 3D by Amina Bouslimani, Carla Porto, Christopher M. Rath, Mingxun Wang, Yurong Guo, Antonio Gonzalez, Donna Berg-Lyon, Gail Ackermann, Gitte Julie Moeller Christensen, Teruaki Nakatsuji, Lingjuan Zhang, Andrew W. Borkowski, Michael J. Meehan, Kathleen Dorrestein, Richard L. Gallo, Nuno Bandeira, Rob Knight, Theodore Alexandrov, and Pieter C. Dorrestein. PNAS March 30, 2015 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1424409112 Published online before print March 30, 2015

This is an open access paper.

Welcome to a new(ish) Canadian science blog

The Bubble Chamber blog was launched in August 2010 (at least that’s when the archive starts) by the University of Toronto’s Science Policy Working Group, which is part of the Institute for  the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST). From their About page,

Because bubble chambers were constructed by the mutually reinforcing intellectual collaboration of a variety of different specialists, bubble chambers serve as a nice metaphor for what we hope to achieve with this blog. The Bubble Chamber is run by a group of historians and philosophers of science whose interests and specializations vary widely, giving us all an opportunity to learn from each other and integrate our knowledge in new and fruitful ways. Our main hope for the blog, however, is that it will find readers from outside our academic disciplines. The idea is that we, as historians and philosophers of science, can create new applications for our specialized knowledge by bringing it to bear on social, political, and policy issues of general interest in ways that engage with a variety of people, from the general public to business people to working scientists. We hope to find such applications because we believe our society as a whole could do with a better, more nuanced understanding of the nature of science, and its place in our modern world.

Thanks to David Bruggeman at the Pasco Phronesis blog for mentioning this new Canadian blog, from his October 5, 2010 posting,

First, some historians and philosophers of science and technology at the University of Toronto have gathered together to form their own blog, The Bubble Chamber (perhaps betraying the influence of physics on their fields). While some of the posts suggest they have not been particularly engaged with the intersections of politics and science, it’s hard to find many historians and philosophers of science and technology looking at contemporary issues, and I think they’re off to a good start.

He also mentions in this posting a science atlas/mapping project that you may want to check out.