Fig. 4.
The presence of the cutimycin BGC has a significant impact on the C. acnes/S. epidermidis ratio in human skin hair follicles. (A) Picture of Bioré pore strip with harvested follicular content. (B) Schematic of the experimental design. (C) Picture of culture isolates from follicular content showing the distinct colony morphologies of C. acnes (Cac), S. epidermidis (Sep) and C. granulosum (Cgr). D) Ranked histogram of the ratio of C. acnes/S. epidermidis from each sampled follicle by the presence and absence of the cutimycin BGC. The Follicle ID denotes a participant by a number from 1–16 and pores by a letter from a-j (e.g. 10b). E) Box plots of the impact of the cutimycin (ctm) BGC presence (+) or absence (–) on the log10 ratio of C. acnes/S. epidermidis CFUs from individual human skin follicular plugs (n=156, each follicle is represented by a dot) collected from 16 participants in total. For statistical analysis, data were pooled based on the assumption that follicles within an individual are independent. There was a statistically significant difference in Cac/Sep (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p=0.006) between ctm+ and ctm- samples.