Revealing the Composition and Potential Ecological Impacts of Airborne Bacterial Communities in Dust Plumes of the Eastern Mediterranean

YINON RUDICH, Burak Adnan Erkorkmaz, Weizmann Institute, Rehovot 76100 Israel

     Abstract Number: 90
     Working Group: Aerosol-Ecosystem Interactions

Abstract
Our understanding of how bacterial communities are transported in the atmosphere is limited. Here, we investigated the key factors affecting the transport of airborne bacterial communities by dust plumes in the Eastern Mediterranean. DNA and RNA extracted from collected aerosols of different sizes and origins were quantified using qPCR and high-throughput amplicon sequencing of 16 S ribosomal RNA gene and transcripts. Our results reveal that the richness and diversity of airborne bacterial communities vary according to air mass origin and particle size. Bacterial abundance, alpha diversity, and species richness were higher in air mass originating from the deserts compared with marine-influenced air masses and were also higher in the coarse particle fraction compared to the fine fraction, suggesting that airborne bacteria are attached to the dust particles or transported as cell aggregates. We identified some dominant bacteria, which have high rRNA abundance, suggesting that these taxa may have been viable in the source environment or during atmospheric transport. Some species of these genera are known to be human, animal, or plant pathogens. Therefore, their presence in the dust samples highlights the potential ecological impact of aerial bacterial transport. We will also discuss our current study, which focuses on metagenomics approaches to investigate the dissemination of potentially pathogenic microorganisms, antibiotic-resistant genes, and virulence factors by dust storms and their potential ecological impacts.