Use of Pyrosequencing to Assess Bacterial Diversity in Moisture-Damaged Buildings

Poor respiratory health outcomes can result from prolonged exposure to damp environments in a number of settings including industrial workplaces, agricultural workplaces, and living spaces.  Damp spaces provide an excellent environment for mold growth as evidenced by a strong correlation between moisture-damage and contamination of specific species of molds.  Respiratory ailments, including allergy and asthma, can result from the release of mycotoxins, spores, and hyphal fragments of molds.  A new perspective on indoor microbial exposure is evolving via application of high-throughput DNA sequencing methods that aims to more objectively and comprehensively characterize these exposures in terms of diversity metrics.  The aim of the proposed work is to investigate how fungal diversity differs between moisture-damaged buildings and undamaged reference buildings by analyzing archived dust samples collected from buildings in the Cincinnati area. The use of the culture-independent pyrosequencing method is expected to indentify individual major genera and species of fungi specifically associated with moisture-damaged buildings that might normally be missed by culture-based methods.  The proposed study is expected to lead to a better understanding of the association between building moisture damage and fungal diversity.  In turn, this should lay the foundation for future work that would investigate how changes in the indoor environment (including ventilation rates, humidity levels, etc.) qualitatively and quantitatively affect these communities which could subsequently influence design recommendations.