Metagenomic Analysis of Airborne Bacterial Community and Diversity in Seoul, Korea, during December 2014, Asian Dust Event.

Seho Cha,Sathiyaraj Srinivasan,Weonhwa Jheong,Eung-Roh Park,Jun Hyeong Jang,Dong-Won Lee,Kyung Sang Kim,Joonho Choe,Sora Lim,Taegun Seo,Hyun-Mi Chung,Myung Kyum Kim,Dongwook Lee,Emmanuel Dias-Neto

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0170693

Abstract

Asian dust or yellow sand events in East Asia are a major issue of environmental contamination and human health, causing increasing concern. A high amount of dust particles, especially called as particulate matter 10 (PM10), is transported by the wind from the arid and semi-arid tracks to the Korean peninsula, bringing a bacterial population that alters the terrestrial and atmospheric microbial communities. In this study, we aimed to explore the bacterial populations of Asian dust samples collected during November–December 2014. The dust samples were collected using the impinger method, and the hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA gene were amplified using PCR followed by pyrosequencing. Analysis of the sequencing data were performed using Mothur software. The data showed that the number of operational taxonomic units and diversity index during Asian dust events were higher than those during non-Asian dust events. At the phylum level, the proportions of Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Firmicutes were different between Asian dust and non-Asian dust samples. At the genus level, the proportions of the genus Bacillus (6.9%), Arthrobacter (3.6%), Blastocatella (2%), Planomicrobium (1.4%) were increased during Asian dust compared to those in non-Asian dust samples. This study showed that the significant relationship between bacterial populations of Asian dust samples and non-Asian dust samples in Korea, which could significantly affect the microbial population in the environment.

Highlights

Asian dust events in East Asia, including Korea and Japan, are a seasonal phenomenon, mostly in the early spring that influences the airborne environment and human health problems [1,2,3]
Based on the hourly averaged particulate matter 10 (PM10) concentration obtained from Korea meteorological administration (KMA) and backward trajectory analysis, the collected airborne samples were classified into two group, Asian dust (December 1 and December 2) and non-Asian dust (November 26 and December 3)
We found that the diversity of the airborne bacterial environment was increased by newly transported dust particles, which contain various microorganisms, during the Asian dust event, leading to a decrement of the proportion of the predominant bacteria in the airborne environment

Summary

Introduction

Asian dust events in East Asia, including Korea and Japan, are a seasonal phenomenon, mostly in the early spring that influences the airborne environment and human health problems [1,2,3]. Limited studies have reported that the bacterial communities in an airborne environment were altered during Asian dust events, and exposure to some of the microorganisms could cause some human health problems [18,19,20]. These studies have provided a biological feature of Asian dust particles, and are useful researches to investigate environmental effects of Asian dust events. Since an Asian dust event is a seasonal phenomenon and bacterial communities in Asian dust particles are influenced by a variety of conditions, including origin region, sampling method, sampling method, and period, an accumulation of bacterial information through a continuous monitoring is important to understand an alteration of bacterial community structure during Asian dust events

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Conclusion