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Title: | Ambient Air Pollution Shapes Bacterial and Fungal Ivy Leaf Communities | Authors: | STEVENS, Vincent THIJS, Sofie BONGAERTS, Eva NAWROT, Tim MARCHAL, Wouter Van Hamme, Jonathan VANGRONSVELD, Jaco |
Issue Date: | 2021 | Publisher: | MDPI | Source: | Microorganisms, 9 (10) (Art N° 2088) | Abstract: | Ambient air pollution exerts deleterious effects on our environment. Continuously exposed to the atmosphere, diverse communities of microorganisms thrive on leaf surfaces, the phylloplane. The composition of these communities is dynamic, responding to many environmental factors including ambient air pollution. In this field study, over a 2 year period, we sampled Hedera helix (ivy) leaves at six locations exposed to different ambient air pollution conditions. Daily, we monitored ambient black carbon (BC), PM2.5, PM10, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone concentrations and found that ambient air pollution led to a 2–7-fold BC increase on leaves, the phylloplane BC load. Our results further indicated that the phylloplane BC load correlates with the diversity of bacterial and fungal leaf communities, impacting diversity more than seasonal effects. The bacterial genera Novosphingobium, Hymenobacter, and Methylorubrum, and the fungal genus Ampelomyces were indicators for communities exposed to the highest phylloplane BC load. Parallel to this, we present one fungal and two bacterial phylloplane strains isolated from an air-polluted environment able to degrade benzene, toluene, and/or xylene, including a genomics-based description of the degradation pathways involved. The findings of this study suggest that ambient air pollution shapes microbial leaf communities, by affecting diversity and supporting members able to degrade airborne pollutants. | Keywords: | black carbon;Hedera helix;phylloplane;microbial communities;metabarcoding;BTX degradation;ambient air pollution | Document URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1942/35502 | e-ISSN: | 2076-2607 | DOI: | 10.3390/microorganisms9102088 | ISI #: | 000712696800001 | Datasets of the publication: | The bacterial and fungal phylloplane metabarcoding samples are available from the Short Read Archive (SRA) of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) under project accession number PRJNA706561. Genome assemblies of the phylloplane BTX degraders are available under project accession number PRJNA727619 (B. licheniformis VSD4, LMG 32319; Pseudomonas sp. VS38, LMG 32320) and PRJNA727621 (Rhodotorula sp. VS67, MUCL 58125). Cultures of these isolates are publicly available from the internationally recognized culture collections BCCM/LMG and BCCM/MUCL (accession numbers are underlined). | Rights: | 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). | Category: | A1 | Type: | Journal Contribution | Validations: | ecoom 2022 |
Appears in Collections: | Research publications |
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Stevens_ea_2021.pdf | Published version | 3.5 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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