PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Humans are exposed to diverse communities of microbes every day. With more time spent indoors by humans, investigations into the communities of microbes inhabiting occupied spaces have become important to deduce the impacts of these microbes on human health and building health. Studies so far have given considerable insight into the communities of the indoor microbiota humans interact with, but mainly focus on sampling surfaces or indoor dust from filters. Beneath the surfaces though, building envelopes have the potential to contain environments that would support the growth of microbial communities. But due to design choices and distance from ground moisture, for example, the temperature and humidity across a building will vary and cause environmental gradients. These microenvironments could then influence the composition of the microbial communities within the walls. Here we present a case study designed to quantify any patterns in the compositions of fungal and bacterial communities existing in a building envelope and determine some of the key variables, such as cardinal direction, distance from floor or distance from wall joinings, that may influence any microbial community composition variation. By drilling small holes across walls of a house, we extracted microbes onto air filters and conducted amplicon sequencing. We found sampling height (distance from the floor) and cardinal direction the wall was facing caused differences in the diversity of the microbial communities, showing that patterns in the microbial composition will be dependent on sampling location within the building. By sampling beneath the surfaces, our approach provides a more complete picture of the microbial condition of a building environment, with the significant variation in community composition demonstrating a potential sampling bias if multiple sampling locations across a building are not considered. By identifying features of the built environment that promote/retard microbial growth, improvements to building designs can be made to achieve overall healthier occupied spaces.
摘要：
人类每天都会接触到不同的微生物群落。随着人类在室内花费更多时间，调查居住在被占用空间的微生物群落对于推断这些微生物对人类健康和建筑健康的影响变得很重要。到目前为止，研究已经对人类与之相互作用的室内微生物群落有了相当深入的了解，但主要集中在采样表面或室内灰尘从过滤器。在表面之下，建筑围护结构有可能包含支持微生物群落生长的环境。但是由于设计选择和与地面水分的距离，例如,整个建筑物的温度和湿度会发生变化，并导致环境梯度。然后，这些微环境可能会影响壁内微生物群落的组成。在这里，我们提出了一个案例研究，旨在量化建筑物围护结构中存在的真菌和细菌群落组成的任何模式，并确定一些关键变量。比如基数方向，与地板的距离或与墙壁连接的距离，这可能会影响任何微生物群落组成的变化。通过在房子的墙壁上钻小孔，我们在空气过滤器上提取微生物并进行扩增子测序。我们发现采样高度（距离地板的距离）和墙壁面对的主要方向导致微生物群落多样性的差异，显示微生物组成的模式将取决于建筑物内的采样位置。通过在表面下取样，我们的方法提供了更完整的建筑环境的微生物状况，如果不考虑建筑物中的多个采样位置，则社区组成的显着变化表明潜在的采样偏差。通过识别促进/延缓微生物生长的建筑环境的特征，可以对建筑设计进行改进，以实现整体更健康的占用空间。
