AAAR 35th Annual Conference October 17 - October 21, 2016 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Metagenomic Investigation of African Dust Events in Puerto Rico Across Multiple Years
SAMANTHA M. WATERS, Sara Purdue, Natasha DeLeon-Rodriguez, Roy Armstrong, Yasmin Detres, Athanasios Nenes, Kostas Konstantinidis, Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract Number: 388 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract The Sahara generates tons of atmospheric dust that travels intercontinental distances, including to the Caribbean islands. These events not only deposit dust but also microbial organisms; some of these organisms may include causative agents of disease outbreaks in humans, livestock, and agricultural crops. Despite the reports of Saharan dust signals in various regions of the globe, it is unknown how atmospheric transit may influence population changes of microorganisms originating from the Sahara. For the purpose of understanding transformation of microbial signals after atmospheric transport, metagenomes from Saharan Dust events (SDPR), collected in Puerto Rico, where compared to metagenomes from various environments: the Sahara, cold and hot deserts, Atlantic Ocean, tropical forest soil, and urban (Beijing) air. Puerto Rican dust events, originating from African, were confirmed by atmospheric satellite (CALIOP) and Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) Model data. Analyses on extracted small subunit (SSU) rRDNA fragments from the metagenomes revealed that on the bacterial level, SDPR samples have more oceanic influences than desert ones, most likely due to emission of surface water droplets containing microorganisms mixing with the air masses from dust events. However, the eukaryotic (e.g. fungal) signals considerably shift the SDPR samples to what is seen in atmospheric bioaerosol samples of the SDPR samples show a dominance of fungi typical of other air samples. SDPR metagenomes were further analyzed for the presence of pathogenic fungal signals. While a major proportion of the pathogenic fungal signals are known to affect plants (including agricultural crops), there were detectable human pathogenic agents, of which, several are known to affect the immunocompromised, such as Cryptococcus spp. (>90 percent nucleotide identity), which is considered to be on the rise in terms of lethality in Asian and Africa AIDS populations. Results indicate that despite long-term transit in the atmosphere, dust events from could carry persistent pathogenic signals originating from the source environment with potential of disease outbreaks.