UV-Tolerant Culturable Bacteria in an Asian Dust Plume Transported over the East China Sea

Abstract

Airborne bacteria are dispersed along with Asian dust and have various influences on atmospheric characteristics, downwind ecosystems, and public health. In this study, aircraft observations were conducted during Asian dust passage and non-dust conditions over the East China Sea in December 2010, and the composition of culturable bacteria within the dust was investigated using culture-based gene analysis. The 16S rRNA gene analysis revealed that the 34 cultured strains isolated from the transported dust could be grouped into Bacillales and Actinomycetales. Highly tolerant endospore-forming bacteria (25 isolates) were predominant in the composition. On the other hand, all non-endospore-forming bacteria (9 isolates) were gram-positive bacteria with high guanine and cytosine contents, which have substantial ultraviolet (UV) resistance. Thus, the isolated culturable bacteria were strains having some tolerance for exposure to UV radiation. Although the atmosphere is an extreme environment for bacterial survival, Asian dust can facilitate atmospheric dispersion of culturable bacteria that are resistant to the harsh ambient air environment.

Variations in the structure of airborne bacterial communities in Tsogt-Ovoo of Gobi desert area during dust events

“…The bacteria attached with coarse particles might maintain their variability more than free bacteria due to the protection of the coarse particles to attached bacteria against atmospheric stressors. In the previous investigation in dust downwind regions such as Japan, members of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were often isolated from the air samples collected during dust events (Hua et al 2007 ; Maki et al 2010 ; Tanaka et al 2011 ; Yamaguchi et al 2012 ; Hara et al 2015 ). The isolates of Bacilli members in Firmicutes have been obtained from the air samples collected at an 800-m high above the ground over Dunhuang City in the Taklamakan desert (Maki et al 2008 ).…”

Wintertime Airborne Measurements of Ice Nucleating Particles in the High Arctic: A Hint to a Marine, Biogenic Source for Ice Nucleating Particles

“…Despite the fact that airborne biogenic material is known to nucleate ice (Burrows et al, 2009;Hara et al, 2015;Lu et al, 2016;Moffett, 2015;Moffett et al, 2015;Mortazavi et al, 2015;Šantl-Temkiv et al, 2015Šantl-Temkiv et al, , 2019Smets et al, 2016), abundance and origin of atmospheric INP over the Arctic Ocean is still not well known due to a scarcity of data. Especially, studies of airborne INP measurements near cloud level are still rare, and the origin of INP remains unclear over ice covered regions like the central Arctic Ocean.…”

Global Ramifications of Dust and Sandstorm Microbiota

“…2017a ). Hara et al. (2015) isolated a number of UV tolerant endospore forming culturable bacteria in air samples collected over the East China Sea during Asian dust events, demonstrating that dust storms carry viable bacteria.…”

“… African dust Sardinia, Italy High throughput Metagenomics: -16S rRNA gene sequencing Culture dependent: -MALDI-TOF Human ( Rosselli et al. 2015 ) UV-tolerant culturable bacteria: Bacillales; Actinomycetales; Gram positive bacteria with high GC content Asian dust Over East China Sea Culture dependent: -16S rRNA sequencing N/D ( Hara et al. 2015 ) Massilia; Planococcus; Carnobacterium; Planomicrobium; Pontibacter; Pedobacter; Lysobacter; Sanguibacter; Ohtaekwangia Asian dust China; S. Korea High throughput Metagenomics: -16S rRNA gene sequencing Human ( An et al.…”