The community distribution of bacteria and fungi on ancient wall paintings of the Mogao Grottoes

Abstract

In this study, we compared the microbial communities colonising ancient cave wall paintings of the Mogao Grottoes exhibiting signs of biodeterioration. Ten samples were collected from five different caves built during different time periods and analysed using culture-independent and culture-dependent methods. The clone library results revealed high microbial diversity, including the bacterial groups Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, Cyanobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Gemmatimonadetes, Planctomycetes, and Chloroflexi and the fungal groups Euascomycetes, Dothideomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, Sordariomycetes, Saccharomycetes, Plectomycetes, Pezizomycetes, Zygomycota, and Basidiomycota. The bacterial community structures differed among the samples, with no consistent temporal or spatial trends. However, the fungal community diversity index correlated with the building time of the caves independent of environmental factors (e.g., temperature or relative humidity). The enrichment cultures revealed that many culturable strains were highly resistant to various stresses and thus may be responsible for the damage to cave paintings in the Mogao Grottoes.

Understanding the influence of microbial contamination on colour alteration of pigments used in wall paintings—The case of red and yellow ochres and ultramarine blue

“…These microorganisms revealed the ability to proliferate at high concentrations of these pigments, remaining metabolically active even after 30 days in contact with these pigments, which evidences their potential capacity to colonize and to induce alteration on mural paintings. 27,29,30 Cell viability assays corroborate the indications obtained by colorimetric and spectral monitorization, where the chromatic degradability of fungi and bacteria was confirmed, as well as their ability to proliferate in the presence of these pigments, whose metabolic activity remains active even under reduced nutritional conditions.…”

Microbiology Meets Archaeology: Soil Microbial Communities Reveal Different Human Activities at Archaic Monte Iato (Sixth Century BC)

“…The high abundance of Pezizomycetes and Dothideomycetes was also noted in a study on the microbial diversity of ancient wall paintings [51]. …”

Substrate and spatial variables are major determinants of fungal community in karst caves in Southwest China

“…The area of karst landform in China is 3.4 million km 2 , covering more than one-third of the total land area, and there are more than half a million karst caves in China (Chen, 2006;Chen, Zhu, & Dai, 2005;Ran & Chen, 1998;Zhang & Zhu, 2012). Surveys on cave fungal diversity have been rare in China, with checklists produced for a few caves (Hsu & Agoramoorthy, 2001;Ma et al, 2015;Man et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2010Wang et al, , 2011Zhang et al, 2017). Few systematic investigations has been reported using molecular tools for the determination of cave fungal communities (Carmichael et al, 2015;Cloutier et al, 2017;Man, 2017;Pfendler et al, 2018).…”