The ability to reliably identify and quantify biological aerosols (bioaerosols) is a fundamental enabler in aerosol microbiome research. The outcome of this work contributes to improved selection of sampling equipment for use in SMS-based aerosol microbiome research and highlights the importance of acknowledging bias introduced by sampling equipment and sample recovery procedures. This suggests that studies conducted with these highly similar air samplers can be compared in a meaningful way, but it would not be recommended to combine samples from the two samplers in joint analyses.
For the most abundant species the samplers were comparable, but systematic sampler-specific differences were observed at species level.
#FB ALPHA V0.2.97.39 SAMPLES ONLY MANUAL#
Bobcat semi-automated filter extraction was shown to be less effective than manual filter extraction. SASS and Bobcat were both found capable of collecting sufficient aerosol biomass amounts for SMS, even at sampling times down to 30 min. Certain species were found to be captured only by one of the two samplers, particularly in subway samples. While alpha diversity did not vary for the two samplers, beta diversity analyses showed significant within-pair variation in subway samples. SMS-based microbiome profiles revealed that highly abundant bacterial species had similar representation across samplers. To evaluate real-world sampling performance, side-by-side SASS and Bobcat sampling was done in a semi-suburban outdoor environment and subway stations. Bobcat tended towards higher sampling efficiencies compared to SASS when combined with manual extraction. Bobcat semi-automated extraction showed reduced efficiency compared to manual extraction. Filter recovery efficiencies were investigated with manual and sampler-specific semi-automated extraction procedures. SASS and Bobcat consistently delivered end-to-end sampling efficiencies > 80% during the aerosol chamber evaluation, demonstrating both as effective high-volume air samplers capable of retaining quantitative associations. Here we investigate the sampling performance and comparability of two hand-portable, battery-operated, high-volume electret filter air samplers, SASS 3100 and ACD-200 Bobcat, previously used in SMS-based aerosol microbiome research. However, SMS of air samples is challenging due to low biomass, but with the use of high-volume air samplers sufficient DNA yields can be obtained. Following advances in sequencing technology, shotgun metagenomic sequencing (SMS) of environmental samples is now possible. Reliable identification and quantification of bioaerosols is fundamental in aerosol microbiome research, highlighting the importance of using sampling equipment with well-defined performance characteristics.
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