This grant will fund the efforts by Noah Fierer, a young researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, to examine the diversity and structure of microbial communities in kitchens. Fierer-in collaboration with his colleague Rob Knight-plans to collect samples from twelve residential kitchens to determine the geographical distribution of microbial communities and to track the movements of the communities across kitchen surfaces. He plans to collect samples from a number of kitchen surfaces before and after meal preparation and collect samples from a variety of foods that were used to prepare the meal. DNA will be isolated from the samples and then amplified, sequenced, and analyzed using bio-informatic tools.