Li Qiang, He Zhang, Wang Zeng, Chen Aidong, Wu Chao
School of Art and Archaeology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China.
Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Xi'an 710054, China.
Microorganisms. 2025 Mar 26;13(4):755. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms13040755.
Microbes colonizing cultural artifacts are a ubiquitous phenomenon which may occur during burial, post-excavation, and storage periods, thereby seriously affecting sustainable heritage conservation. In this study, high-throughput sequencing technology was applied to analyze the microbial community structure in ancient mural paintings and the surrounding air, as well as to identify the most characteristic taxa causing black spot contamination. The results showed that members of the genera and were highly abundant in black-spots-contaminated areas and rarely detected in the air and uncontaminated mural paintings. Air samples of the two tombs showed no significant difference in Chao1 and Shannon indices, whereas statistically significant differences were observed compared to those samples collected from black spots. The taxonomic diversity of the microbial community in the soil-covered mural paintings and air exhibited similar structures at the genus level. Moreover, when compared to other areas of the two tombs, the samples from black spots differed not only in microbial community composition but also in microbial assembly processes and the co-occurrence patterns, such as much less network complexity in the black spots area. Functional predictions uncover the presence of microbial functional profiles involved in nitrogen cycling, organic matter degradation, and animal and human pathogens, representing a potential threat to cultural relics and public health. These results advance our understanding of the impacts of archeological excavations on the microbial community variation in tomb mural paintings.
在文物上定殖的微生物是一种普遍存在的现象，可能发生在埋葬、发掘后和储存期间，从而严重影响文化遗产的可持续保护。在本研究中，应用高通量测序技术分析古代壁画及其周围空气中的微生物群落结构，并鉴定导致黑斑污染的最具特征的分类群。结果表明，某属的成员在受黑斑污染的区域中高度丰富，而在空气和未受污染的壁画中很少检测到。两座墓葬的空气样本在Chao1和Shannon指数上没有显著差异，但与从黑斑处采集的样本相比，观察到统计学上的显著差异。在土壤覆盖的壁画和空气中，微生物群落的分类多样性在属水平上呈现出相似的结构。此外，与两座墓葬的其他区域相比，来自黑斑的样本不仅在微生物群落组成上不同，而且在微生物组装过程和共现模式上也不同，例如黑斑区域的网络复杂性要低得多。功能预测揭示了参与氮循环、有机物降解以及动物和人类病原体的微生物功能谱的存在，这对文物和公众健康构成了潜在威胁。这些结果增进了我们对考古发掘对墓葬壁画中微生物群落变化影响的理解。
