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Published online on December 20, 2006, 10.1073/pnas.0608255104
PNAS | January 2, 2007 | vol. 104 | no. 1 | 299-304
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BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES / MICROBIOLOGY
Urban aerosols harbor diverse and dynamic bacterial populations

Eoin L. Brodie, Todd Z. DeSantis, Jordan P. Moberg Parker, Ingrid X. Zubietta, Yvette M. Piceno, and Gary L. Andersen*

Ecology Department, Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720

Edited by Steven E. Lindow, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and approved November 7, 2006 (received for review September 20, 2006)

Considering the importance of its potential implications for human health, agricultural productivity, and ecosystem stability, surprisingly little is known regarding the composition or dynamics of the atmosphere's microbial inhabitants. Using a custom high-density DNA microarray, we detected and monitored bacterial populations in two U.S. cities over 17 weeks. These urban aerosols contained at least 1,800 diverse bacterial types, a richness approaching that of some soil bacterial communities. We also reveal the consistent presence of bacterial families with pathogenic members including environmental relatives of select agents of bioterrorism significance. Finally, using multivariate regression techniques, we demonstrate that temporal and meteorological influences can be stronger factors than location in shaping the biological composition of the air we breathe.

16S rRNA | biosurveillance | aerobiology | microarray | climate change

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

Author contributions: E.L.B. and T.Z.D. contributed equally to this work; E.L.B., T.Z.D., and G.L.A. designed research; E.L.B., T.Z.D., J.P.M.P., I.X.Z., and Y.M.P. performed research; E.L.B., T.Z.D., Y.M.P., and G.L.A. analyzed data; and E.L.B., T.Z.D., and G.L.A. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article is a PNAS direct submission.

Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database (accession nos. DQ129237–DQ129666, DQ236245–DQ236250, and DQ515230–DQ515231).

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0608255104/DC1.

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: glandersen{at}lbl.gov

© 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA


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