Identifying active microbes in the built environment

Are microbes party crashers or guests of honor in the built environment? Our research seeks to understand who are the key microbial players in these human-made structures and how they emerge, if they are alive or dead, and if they are alive what activities are they performing? Answers to these questions have consequences to the humans that spend 90% of their time indoors. The predominance of this habitat renders humans both a significant source of microbial input but also recipients of at least a fraction of their surrounding microbiome.