Abstract
Airborne microorganisms in the waste associated environments are more active and complex compared to other places. However, the diversity and structure of airborne bacteria in waste-associated environments are still not clearly understood. The purpose of this study was to assess airborne bacterial community in electronic waste dismantling site and a waste transfer station based on culture-dependent and culture-independent methods. A total of 229 isolates were obtained from four airborne sites collected from residential area, electronic industrial park, and office area in or near an electronic waste dismantling site and a waste transfer station in Southern China in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Most of the isolates were isolated from air for the first time and 14 potentially novel species were identified by Sanger sequencing. Bacterial communities in waste-associated bioaerosols were predominated by Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes. Abundant genera (>1%) included Paracaedibacteraceae (uncultured EF667926), Ralstonia, Chroococcidiopsis, Chitinophagaceae (uncultured FN428761), Sphingobium, and Heliimonas. One-third of the species in these genera were uncultured approximately. Differences community structure existed in airborne bacterial diversity among different sampling sites. These results showed that waste-associated environments have unique bacterial diversity. Further studies on such environments could provide new insights into bacterial community.
Highlights
Bacterial diversity is central to explore the relationship between bacterial aerosols and human health or public health, mainly reflecting in both direct and indirect aspects [1]
The concentrations and size distributions of culturable airborne bacteria at sampling sites A, B, C, Dm, Da, and distribution at night (Dn) are presented in Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Figure 2
Bacteria concentrations were highest in the office area (744 ± 78 CFU/m3) and lowest in the e-industrial park (70 ± 5 CFU/m3)
Summary
Bacterial diversity is central to explore the relationship between bacterial aerosols and human health or public health, mainly reflecting in both direct and indirect aspects [1]. Bacterial diversity directly affects human health, which the rich bacterial community can prevent from certain metabolic diseases, gastrointestinal diseases or skin mucous membrane diseases [2, 3]. Studying new communities can reveal previously unknown functions including exploitation of novel compounds, potential cause of drug side effects, therapeutic target, and the source of inflammatory disease [5,6,7]. Studies on bacterial diversity can be expected to provide important new insights with applications in biotechnology, human health, and public health [7]
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