Abstract
BackgroundThe presence of microrganisms in pharmaceutical production plant environments is typically monitored by cultural methods, however these cannot detect the unculturable fraction of the microbial community. To get more accurate information on the composition of these indoor microbial communities, both water and air microbiome from a pharmaceutical production plant were profiled by 16S amplicon sequencing.ResultsIn the water system, we found taxa which typically characterize surface freshwater, groundwater and oligotrophic environments. The airborne microbiome resulted dominated by taxa usually found in outdoor air in combination with human-associated taxa. The alpha- and beta- diversity values showed that the heat-based sanitization process of the water plant affects the composition of the water microbiome by transiently increasing both diversity and evenness. Taxonomic compositional shifts were also detected in response to sanitization, consisting in an increase of Firmicutes and α-Proteobacteria. On the other hand, seasonality seems to be the main driver of bacterial community composition in air of this work environment.ConclusionsThis approach resulted useful to describe the taxonomy of these indoor microbiomes and could be further applied to other built environments, in which the knowledge of the microbiome composition is of relevance. In addition, this study could assist in the design of new guidelines to improve microbiological quality control in indoor work environments.
Highlights
The presence of microrganisms in pharmaceutical production plant environments is typically monitored by cultural methods, these cannot detect the unculturable fraction of the microbial community
Our approach proved to be applicable for the description of these indoor microbiomes, and could be further applied to other built environments where the knowledge of the microbiome composition is of relevance
The airborne microbiome in the pharmaceutical plant seems to be much more influenced by seasonality than location
Summary
The presence of microrganisms in pharmaceutical production plant environments is typically monitored by cultural methods, these cannot detect the unculturable fraction of the microbial community. To get more accurate information on the composition of these indoor microbial communities, both water and air microbiome from a pharmaceutical production plant were profiled by 16S amplicon sequencing. The major drivers of indoor air microbiome composition. We aimed at developing a novel approach for microbiological quality control of water and air applicable to professional indoor environments, Pacchioni et al BMC Microbiology (2018) 18:124 including pharmaceutical companies. We describe the taxonomic profiles of water and air borne microbiome in an italian pharmaceutical plant based on high-troughput sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicons. Our approach proved to be applicable for the description of these indoor microbiomes, and could be further applied to other built environments where the knowledge of the microbiome composition is of relevance
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