The answer: not when the skin is damaged! We tested multiple bacterial species, including mouse commensal S. xylosus, C. accolens, and 3 different isolates of S. epidermidis.All delayed healing when applied to abraded mouse flank skin. [2/3]

Very cool paper! I really enjoyed the the S. xylosus story line. We find it a lot on cheese rinds and I think it is an understudied Staph. (see here for a recent paper from our group on this species: doi.org/10.1038/s413...) Do you think most lab mice have S. xylosus in their skin microbiome?

 Bonus: Neither E. coli nor L. reuteri delayed healing, indicating this phenotype is limited to skin commensals! Thanks to co-first Veda Khadka, and co-author Magalie Boucher, PI @contaminatedsci.bsky.social and Lieberman Lab for feedback! [3/3]