Bacterial 16S sequences from aerosol samples of Zero Carbon Building in Hong Kong
Currently, there is no information pertaining to
the airborne bacterial communities (microbiota) of green buildings. In this
study, the air bacterial community of a zero-carbon building (ZCB) in Hong Kong
is characterized by targeting the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. Bacteria associated
with the outdoor environment and occupant skin dominate the indoor air
microbiota. Differences in overall community diversity, membership, and
composition associated with short (day-to-day) and long-term temporal
properties are detected, which may be driven by specific environmental genera
and taxa. Furthermore, time-decay relationships in community membership (based
on unweighted UniFrac distances) and composition (based on weighed UniFrac
distances) differ depending on the season and sampling location. A Bayesian
source-tracking approach further supports the importance of adjacent outdoor air
microbiota in sourcing the ZCB indoor microbiota. Despite the unique building
attributes, the ZCB microbiota detected and its temporal characteristics are
not dissimilar to that of built environments investigated previously. In the
future, controlled experiments and microbiota investigations of other ZCB will
undoubtedly uncover additional knowledge related to how microbiomes in green
buildings are influenced by their distinctive architectural attributes.