Functioning as the exterior interface of the human body with the environment, skin acts as a physical barrier to prevent the invasion of foreign pathogens while providing a home to the commensal microbiota. The harsh physical landscape of skin, particularly the desiccated, nutrient-poor, acidic environment, also contributes to the adversity that pathogens face when colonizing human skin. Despite this, the skin is colonized by a diverse microbiota. In this Review, we describe amplicon and shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing studies that have been used to assess the taxonomic diversity of microorganisms that are associated with skin from the kingdom to the strain level. We discuss recent insights into skin microbial communities, including their composition in health and disease, the dynamics between species and interactions with the immune system, with a focus on Propionibacterium acnes, Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus.

皮肤作为人体与环境的外部界面，可充当物理屏障，防止外来病原体入侵，同时为共生微生物群提供住所。皮肤的严峻物理环境，特别是干燥，缺乏营养的酸性环境，也加剧了病原体在人类皮肤上定居时所面临的逆境。尽管如此，皮肤还是被各种各样的微生物所定殖。在本综述中，我们描述了扩增子和shot弹枪宏基因组DNA测序研究，这些研究已用于评估从王国到菌株水平与皮肤相关的微生物的分类学多样性。我们讨论了有关皮肤微生物群落的最新见解，包括它们在健康和疾病中的组成，物种之间的动态以及与免疫系统的相互作用，痤疮丙酸杆菌，表皮葡萄球菌和金黄色葡萄球菌。