American Association for Aerosol Research - Abstract Submission

AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

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Correlations of Airborne Microbial Community with Air Pollutions in Beijing

WEIZHUO YAN, Buying Wang, Changyi Xie, Yunfeng Yang, Jingkun Jiang, Tsinghua

     Abstract Number: 128
     Working Group: Bioaerosols

Abstract
Airborne microorganisms are ubiquitous in the atmosphere and may have substantial impacts on atmospheric physics, chemistry, and human health. On the other hand, airborne microbes may also be affected by other species in the atmosphere. The potential influence of the severe air pollutions in urban environment on airborne microorganisms remains unexplored. In this study, we examined the response of microbial communities to gaseous pollutants, chemical components in particulate matter, and meteorology parameters. Twenty-three daily PM10 samples were collected in Beijing during the winter of the past three years. Airborne microbial communities were characterized by 16S rRNA sequencing and metagenomic sequencing. Chemical components of these PM samples were also analyzed. It was found that temperature and relative humidity have strong influence on the structure of microbial community (P<0.01). The relative abundances of 18% genera of bacteria are strongly correlated with temperature, while the biodiversity becomes high when relative humidity increase. Both NOx and water-soluble NH4+ in PM appear to be strongly correlated with the community structure and the relative abundance of several kinds of microorganisms (P<0.01), especially some genera which play crucial roles in the process of nitrogen cycle.