Continental-scale distributions of dust-associated bacteria and fungi
Continental-scale distributions of dust-associated bacteria and fungi
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1420815112
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发表时间：
2015-05-05
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Fierer, Noah
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Barberan, Albert;Ladau, Joshua;Fierer, Noah
几个世纪以来，人们都知道微生物在大气中无处不在，它们能够远距离传播。同样，这些空气传播的细菌和真菌可以对人类健康以及植物和牲畜的健康产生无数的影响，这是公认的。然而，我们对这些空气中微生物群落在不同地理区域之间的变化，以及在大空间尺度上构成近地表微生物地理格局的因素的理解有限。我们从美国各地1200户家庭的外表面收集了灰尘样本，以了解近地表大气中细菌和真菌的大陆尺度分布。美国各地的微生物群落组成变化很大，但地理格局可以用气候和土壤变量来解释，美国沿海地区的空气微生物群落相似。尽管与生活在农村地区的人相比，生活在城市化程度较高地区的人并没有暴露于不同的室外空气微生物群落，但我们的研究结果确实表明，城市化导致空气中微生物群的同质化，与农村地区相比，城市社区的大陆尺度地理变异性更小。这些结果为我们提供了对空气中微生物在大陆范围内分布的初步了解，这些信息可用于确定室外空气中微生物暴露与作物、牲畜和人类疾病发病率之间的可能联系。
It has been known for centuries that microorganisms are ubiquitous in the atmosphere, where they are capable of long-distance dispersal. Likewise, it is well-established that these airborne bacteria and fungi can have myriad effects on human health, as well as the health of plants and livestock. However, we have a limited understanding of how these airborne communities vary across different geographic regions or the factors that structure the geographic patterns of near-surface microbes across large spatial scales. We collected dust samples from the external surfaces of similar to 1,200 households located across the United States to understand the continental-scale distributions of bacteria and fungi in the near-surface atmosphere. The microbial communities were highly variable in composition across the United States, but the geographic patterns could be explained by climatic and soil variables, with coastal regions of the United States sharing similar airborne microbial communities. Although people living in more urbanized areas were not found to be exposed to distinct outdoor air microbial communities compared with those living in more rural areas, our results do suggest that urbanization leads to homogenization of the airborne microbiota, with more urban communities exhibiting less continental-scale geographic variability than more rural areas. These results provide our first insight into the continental-scale distributions of airborne microbes, which is information that could be used to identify likely associations between microbial exposures in outdoor air and incidences of disease in crops, livestock, and humans.