Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2019 Mar 18;14(3):e0213355. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213355. eCollection 2019.
Water-damaged housing has been associated with a number of negative health outcomes, principally respiratory disease and asthma. Much of what we know about fungi associated with water-damaged buildings has come from culture-based and immunochemical methods. Few studies have used high-throughput sequencing technologies to assess the impact of water-damage on microbial communities in residential buildings. In this study we used amplicon sequencing and quantitative-PCR to evaluate fungal communities on surfaces and in airborne dust in multiple units of a condemned public housing project located in the San Francisco Bay Area. We recruited 21 households to participate in this study and characterized their apartments as either a unit with visible mold or no visible mold. We sampled airborne fungi from dust settled over a month-long time period from the outdoors, in units with no visible mold, and units with visible mold. In units with visible mold we additionally sampled the visible fungal colonies from bathrooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and living rooms. We found that fungal biomass in settled dust was greater outdoors compared to indoors, but there was no significant difference of fungal biomass in units with visible mold and no visible mold. Interestingly, we found that fungal diversity was reduced in units with visible mold compared to units with no visible mold and the outdoors. Units with visible mold harbored fungal communities distinct from units with no visible mold and the outdoors. Units with visible mold had a greater abundance of taxa within the classes Eurotiomycetes, Saccharomycetes, and Wallemiomycetes. Colonies of fungi collected from units with visible mold were dominated by two Cladosporium species, C. sphaerospermum and C halotolerans. This study demonstrates that high-throughput sequencing of fungi indoors can be a useful strategy for distinguishing distinct microbial exposures in water-damaged homes with visible and nonvisible mold growth, and may provide a microbial means for identifying water damaged housing.
水损房屋与许多负面健康后果有关，主要是呼吸道疾病和哮喘。我们对与水损建筑相关的真菌的了解大多来自基于培养和免疫化学的方法。很少有研究使用高通量测序技术来评估水损对住宅建筑中微生物群落的影响。在这项研究中，我们使用扩增子测序和定量 PCR 来评估位于旧金山湾区的一个被谴责的公共住房项目的多个单元中的表面和空气中尘埃中的真菌群落。我们招募了 21 户家庭参与这项研究，并将他们的公寓描述为有可见霉菌的单元或没有可见霉菌的单元。我们从无可见霉菌的单元和有可见霉菌的单元中采集了一个月内从室外沉降的空气中的真菌。在有可见霉菌的单元中，我们还从浴室、厨房、卧室和客厅中采集了可见的真菌菌落。我们发现，沉降尘埃中的真菌生物量在室外比在室内更大，但有可见霉菌的单元和无可见霉菌的单元中的真菌生物量没有显著差异。有趣的是，我们发现与无可见霉菌的单元和室外相比，有可见霉菌的单元中的真菌多样性降低。有可见霉菌的单元中的真菌群落与无可见霉菌的单元和室外的真菌群落不同。有可见霉菌的单元中，属于 Eurotiomycetes、Saccharomycetes 和 Wallemiomycetes 类的真菌丰度更高。从有可见霉菌的单元中收集的真菌菌落主要由两种枝孢属真菌，C. sphaerospermum 和 C halotolerans 组成。这项研究表明，室内真菌高通量测序是一种有用的策略，可以区分有可见和不可见霉菌生长的水损房屋中的不同微生物暴露，并且可能为识别水损房屋提供一种微生物手段。
