Optimization of a Portable Adenosine Triphosphate Bioluminescence Assay Coupled with a Receiver Operating Characteristic Model to Assess Bioaerosol Concentrations on Site

Abstract

Rapid monitoring of the microbial content in indoor air is an important issue. In this study, we develop a method for applying a Coriolis sampler coupled with a portable ATP luminometer for characterization of the collection efficiency of bioaerosol samplers and then test this approach in field applications. The biological collection efficiencies of the Coriolis sampler and a BioSampler for collecting four different types of bioaerosols, including Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Candida famata and endospores of Bacillus subtilis, were compared in a chamber study. The results showed that the ATP assay may indicate the four microbes’ viability, and that their defined viabilities were positively correlated with their culturability. In addition, the optimal sampling conditions of the Coriolis sampler were a 200 L/min flow rate and a sampling time of 30 min. Under these conditions, there was no significant difference in sampling performance between the BioSampler and Coriolis sampler. In field applications, the best ATP benchmark that corresponded to culturable levels of < 500 CFU/m3 was 287 RLUs (sensitivity: 100%; specificity: 80%) for bacteria and 370 RLUs (sensitivity: 79%; specificity: 82%) for fungi according to receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Consequently, an ATP criterion is recommended for indicating whether the corresponding airborne culturable concentrations of microbes meet those of published guidelines.

Sampling efficiency and nucleic acid stability during long-term sampling with different bioaerosol samplers

“…The Uranine concentration in spike samples was highly variable after 2 h, but the variability was reduced when the air inlet and metal flow cane was rinsed with water in between every run. As large volumes of collection buffer evaporate during long-term sampling with Coriolis (Tseng et al, 2020 ), there are concerns that this liquid may condense in the interior walls of the air inlet and flow cane. This can cause a random backflush into the sampling cone, which can contribute to cross-contamination between samples and could explain the large variations observed for Coriolis.…”