State of Residency: Microbial Strain Diversity in the Skin

Human skin hosts a diversity of microbiota. Advances in sequencing and analytical methods have increasingly illuminated the importance of the finest resolution in understanding the genetic diversity of the skin microbiota, highlighting strain-level differences and their functional implications. Such genetic diversity, which exists within an individual and is strongly individual specific underscores the difficulty in elucidating functionality. Integrated investigations of the microbial strain diversity through sequencing and culture-based approaches with host immunology and physiology will be critical in expanding our understanding of the roles of the skin microbiome.