AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
Octanol-water Partition Coefficients of Airborne Fungi
CHEOLWOON WOO, Naomichi Yamamoto, Seoul National University
Abstract Number: 725 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract Bioaerosol research has been largely focusing on identifying the diverse communities of bioaerosol in the atmosphere. However, the biophysical properties of bioaerosols have yet to be fully understood, especially for fungi. In this study, we utilized octanol-water partition coefficients to characterize the hydrophobicity and the hydrophilicity of airborne fungi sampled from the atmosphere of Seoul, South Korea. Airborne fungal particles were collected using the two-stage cyclone sampler. Collected airborne fungal particles were separated into octanol and water phases and the two immiscible phases were divided by the frozen-water phase method. Partition coefficients of each fungus at each taxonomic level were obtained based on the absolute concentrations derived from quantitative PCR and relative abundances produced by high-throughput sequencing. Result shows that fungal genera within the same family level tend to show similar partition coefficients. However, higher level similarities were not observed as the partition coefficients of fungal families of the same order level showed dissimilar partition coefficients. The genera Biscogniauxia, Dicyma, Podosordaria and Subamaniomyces, all members of the Xylariaceae family, showed hydrophobic properties. However, the genera Eutypa and Eutypella, members of the Diatrypaceae family, showed hydrophilic properties despite both the Xylariaceae and Diatrypaceae families being members of the Xylariales order. The results of this study indicate that the hydrophobic or hydrophilic properties of airborne fungal particles can be predicted by their family level classification, but not at the higher order level. The differences between fungal family and order level genetic similarities should be further studied to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying genetic traits responsible for hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity of airborne fungal particles.