Biodiversity of Aerosolized Particles (Final Report)
Abstract
An overarching objective of this Director's Research Initiative (DRI) is to explore the use of state-of-the-art DNA-sequencing techniques to begin to answer important questions about aerosolized microbes and other biological particles in the atmosphere, such as how these bioparticles vary with time, location, and air-mass trajectories and their associated humidity, rainfall, and land surface types. Our initial plan, to collect the air samples using Davis Rotating Unit for Monitoring (DRUM) samplers, failed to obtain sufficient DNA for sequencing. Methods were developed to isolate DNA from high-volume (hi-vol) samplers. We then obtained approximately 150 air samples with hi-vol samplers and 850 samples with PS-1 air samplers of the type commonly used by the US Army Public Health Command. Both samplers can obtain sufficient DNA for sequencing in times as short as 2 h. We computed air-mass trajectories, rainfall humidity, and temperature along each trajectory using Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT). These trajectories were used in picking the samples to sequence. DNA amplification and purification protocols were developed to target specific regions of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes for sequencing.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2015
- Accession Number
- ADA614803
Entities
People
- Brandy Dorsey
- Brian Reen
- Christian J. Sund
- David C Doughty
- Edward D. Creegan
- Elliot Gerlach
- Mark Coleman
- Matthew D. Servinsky
- Steven C. Hill
- Suelynn Ren
Organizations
- United States Army Research Laboratory