This document summarizes several studies conducted by James Meadow and colleagues on personal microbial clouds and the indoor microbiome. The studies found that:
1) Indoor bacterial communities are influenced by factors like ventilation, occupancy, and outdoor air sources. Human-associated bacteria account for differences between occupied and unoccupied indoor spaces.
2) The type of indoor surface predicts the bacterial communities found on it, and how people interact with surfaces influences which bacteria are present.
3) An occupied room and the individual occupying it have distinct bacterial signatures compared to when empty. These signatures are found both in airborne and settled particle samples.
4) Different people leave distinct but personal microbial clouds behind in occupied indoor spaces,