Report Details Efforts to Improve, Advance Indoor Microbial SamplingFrom NIST Tech Beat: May 29, 2012
Contact: Michael E. Newman 301-975-3025 Humans spend greater than 90 percent of their time indoors, but we're never alone there. Bacteria and viruses, scientists estimate, make up half of the world's biomass—some 10 nonillion (1 followed by 31 zeros) microorganisms—and we most often meet them within enclosed spaces. So, that's where the modern microbe hunter often looks first. A new report issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) offers guidance to make the hunting more effective.
A fundamental understanding of the microbial community in the built environment—including estimates of diversity, function and concentration—is necessary to accurately assess human exposure, and in turn, the potential impacts on human health. To address the many challenges associated with characterizing this invisible biosphere, develop innovative approaches to make both aerosol and surface sampling more effective, and prioritize research efforts to optimize and standardize those methods, NIST, Yale University and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation held the "Challenges in Microbial Sampling in the Indoor Environment Workshop" on Feb. 14-15, 2011, at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md. The new report summarizes the results of that workshop. Traditionally, taking a "census" of the microflora in an indoor environment has been done by taking samples from both the air and various surfaces, growing them in nutrient media, identifying the different species that arose, and then extrapolating an estimated total quantity for each species based on the numbers present in the culture. This approach provides a view of the microbial population that is limited, unreliable and biased toward those few species that grow successfully in culture. In recent years, culture-based detection, identification and quantification is being replaced by culture-independent characterization of an entire microbial community by studying the different genomic DNA sequences present. Attendees at the indoor sampling workshop were charged with optimizing this modern genomic approach to microbial analysis by:
NIST Technical Note (TN) 1737, Challenges in Microbial Sampling in the Indoor Environment—Workshop Summary Report, is available online at www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id=910577.* * The URL for TN 1737 was updated on May 31, 2012. |