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Journal article
Indoor-biofilter growth and exposure to airborne chemicals drive similar changes in plant root bacterial communities
Applied and environmental microbiology, v 80(16), pp 4805-4813
Aug 2014
PMID: 24878602
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Due to the long durations spent inside by many humans, indoor air quality has become a growing concern. Biofiltration has emerged as a potential mechanism to clean indoor air of harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are typically found at concentrations higher indoors than outdoors. Root-associated microbes are thought to drive the functioning of plant-based biofilters, or biowalls, converting VOCs into biomass, energy, and carbon dioxide, but little is known about the root microbial communities of such artificially grown plants, how or whether they differ from those of plants grown in soil, and whether any changes in composition are driven by VOCs. In this study, we investigated how bacterial communities on biofilter plant roots change over time and in response to VOC exposure. Through 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, we compared root bacterial communities from soil-grown plants with those from two biowalls, while also comparing communities from roots exposed to clean versus VOC-laden air in a laboratory biofiltration system. The results showed differences in bacterial communities between soil-grown and biowall-grown plants and between bacterial communities from plant roots exposed to clean air and those from VOC-exposed plant roots. Both biowall-grown and VOC-exposed roots harbored enriched levels of bacteria from the genus Hyphomicrobium. Given their known capacities to break down aromatic and halogenated compounds, we hypothesize that these bacteria are important VOC degraders. While different strains of Hyphomicrobium proliferated in the two studied biowalls and our lab experiment, strains were shared across plant species, suggesting that a wide range of ornamental houseplants harbor similar microbes of potential use in living biofilters.
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Details
- Title
- Indoor-biofilter growth and exposure to airborne chemicals drive similar changes in plant root bacterial communities
- Creators
- Jacob A Russell - Drexel UniversityYi Hu - Drexel UniversityLinh Chau - Drexel UniversityMargarita Pauliushchyk - Drexel UniversityIoannis Anastopoulos - Drexel UniversityShivanthi Anandan - Drexel UniversityMichael S Waring - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- Applied and environmental microbiology, v 80(16), pp 4805-4813
- Publisher
- American Society for Microbiology (ASM)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Biology; Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000340038400003
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84904895453
- Other Identifier
- 991019168203904721
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InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology
- Microbiology