Computational and Molecular Dynamics Modeling to Reduce Environmental Effects on Bioaerosols and Mitigate Disease Transmission

Meiyi Zhang, Brooke Smith, John Cate, Stephen King, Sunil Kumar, MARIA KING, Texas A&M University

     Abstract Number: 157
     Working Group: Bioaerosols

Abstract
Viral infectivity and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of bacteria pose increasing threat to global public health, requiring effective treatment strategies. Even though antibiotics, metals, and other pollutants are the main drivers for AMR development, growing evidence suggests that other environmental stressors such as air conditioning airflow contribute to triggering resistance in aerosolized pathogens. Due to mechanical and molecular forces, deposition, resuspension, attachment, and detachment from surfaces may change the behavior of bioaerosols in ventilation airflow. Our study demonstrates that different environmental conditions affect the binding kinetics of virus proteins to different surfaces. Experimental data and modeling results show that aerosolization not only exerts mechanical stress on bacteria, but also affects their cell membrane, indicating correlation with the airflow triggering resistance mostly to antibiotics that inhibit cell wall synthesis. Although bacteria are robust creatures, environmental conditions, including airflow parameters can be manipulated to disrupt their proliferation. The layout of a facility will directly affect whether the rooms are more likely to become contaminated with aerosolized pathogens or not. Of greatest concern in food processing facilities and healthcare settings is the possibility of generating bioaerosols containing resistant pathogens. Therefore, it is critical to optimize the airflow patterns to minimize the entrainment of pathogens and the residence time of contaminated air. Computational airflow models developed in this study show that facility layout strongly affects the transport and behavior of bioaerosols, opening new avenues for engineering to reduce adverse responses triggered by environmental effects and combat their spread.