Identifying indoor environmental patterns from bioaerosol material using HPLC
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Identifying indoor environmental patterns from bioaerosol material using HPLC Sarah J. R. Staton & Josemar A. Castillo & Thomas J. Taylor & Pierre Herckes & Mark A. Hayes
Received: 27 June 2012 / Revised: 16 September 2012 / Accepted: 10 October 2012 / Published online: 24 October 2012 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
Abstract A substantial portion of the atmospheric particle budget is of biological origin (human and animal dander, plant and insect debris, etc.). These bioaerosols can be considered information-rich packets of biochemical data specific to the organism of origin. In this study, bioaerosol samples from various indoor environments were analyzed to create identifiable patterns attributable to a source level of occupation. Air samples were collected from environments representative of human high-traffic- and low-traffic indoor spaces along with direct human skin sampling. In all settings, total suspended particulate matter was collected and the total aerosol protein concentration ranged from 0.03 to 1.2 μg/m3. High performance liquid chromatography was chosen as a standard analysis technique for the examination of aqueous aerosol extracts to distinguish signatures of occupation compared to environmental background. The results of this study suggest that bioaerosol “fingerprinting” is possible with the two test environments being distinguishable at a 97 % confidence interval. Keywords Bioaerosols . Environmental monitoring . Environmental pattern recognition . HPLC . Separation
S. J. R. Staton : J. A. Castillo : P. Herckes : M. A. Hayes (*) Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. J. R. Staton US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 56944, USA T. J. Taylor Department of Mathematics and Statistical Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
Introduction Bioaerosols are ubiquitous bits of biological material found suspended in the air [1, 2]. These materials are bacteria, viruses, and pollen as well as by-products of skin and hair of humans and animals along with insect and plant debris. The particles range in size from 0.3 to 100 μm [3] and contain a variety of different information-bearing biomolecules. For example, bioaerosols from vertebrates are largely composed of structural proteins like keratins [4–7]. These proteins are more stable and robust than other commonly targeted biomolecules (DNA for example), given their function as the barrier layer in the skin. Other potential molecules of interest found in shed skin and hair include truncated pieces of DNA, lipids, nucleic acids, amino acids, and glycosylated species [3]. Consequently, bioaerosols could be seen as biochemical “calling cards” of the organism of origin that could be utilized for identification. The shedding and aerosolization of material represents a fundamental biological process that analytical methods could exploit to expose the organism of origin and its potential whereabouts. The exploitation of bioaerosol material
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