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Diverse bacterial populations of PM2.5 in urban and suburb Shanghai, China

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Abstract

Airborne bacteria play key roles in terrestrial and marine ecosystems and human health, yet our understanding of bacterial communities and their response to the environmental variables lags significantly behind that of other components of PM2.5 Here, atmospheric fine particles obtained from urban and suburb Shanghai were analyzed by using the qPCR and Illumina Miseq sequencing. The bacteria with an average concentration of 2.12 × 103 cells/m3, were dominated by Sphingomonas, Curvibacter, Acinetobacter, Bradyrhizobium, Methylobacterium, Halomonas, Aliihoeflea, and Phyllobacterium, which were related to the nitrogen, carbon, sulfur cycling and human health risk. Our results provide a global survey of bacterial community across urban, suburb, and high-altitude sites. In Shanghai (China), urban PM2.5 harbour more diverse and dynamic bacterial populations than that in the suburb. The structural equation model explained about 27%, 41%, and 20%–78% of the variance found in bacteria diversity, concentration, and discrepant genera among urban and suburb sites. This work furthered the knowledge of diverse bacteria in a coastal Megacity in the Yangtze river delta and emphasized the potential impact of environmental variables on bacterial community structure.

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Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the Shanghai Sailing Program (19YF1403200), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 21906023, 91843301, 91743202, 21527814), Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2016YFC0202700), Marie Skodowska-Curie Actions (690958-MARSU-RISE-2015), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2018M640331).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Particle Pollution and Prevention (LAP3), Department of Environmental Science & Engineering, Fudan Tyndall Centre, Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China

    Caihong Xu, Jianmin Chen, Zhikai Wang, Hui Chen, Hao Feng, Zhenzhen Wang, Xingnan Ye, Haidong Kan & Zhuohui Zhao

  2. Center for Excellence in Regional Atmospheric Environment, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China

    Jianmin Chen

  3. Institute of Eco-Chongming (IEC), Yangtze River Delta Estuary Wetland Station, School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China

    Jianmin Chen, Hui Chen, Lujun Wang, Yuning Xie & Xingnan Ye

  4. School of Public Health, Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety (Ministry of Education), NHC Key Laboratory of Health Technology Assessment, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, China

    Haidong Kan & Zhuohui Zhao

  5. Institut de Combustion, Aérothermique, Réactivité et Environnement, CNRS, 45071, Orléans Cedex 02, France

    Abdelwahid Mellouki

Authors
  1. Caihong Xu
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  2. Jianmin Chen
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  3. Zhikai Wang
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  4. Hui Chen
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  5. Hao Feng
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  6. Lujun Wang
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  7. Yuning Xie
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  8. Zhenzhen Wang
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  9. Xingnan Ye
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  10. Haidong Kan
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  11. Zhuohui Zhao
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  12. Abdelwahid Mellouki
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jianmin Chen.

Additional information

Highlights

• Urban aerosols harbour diverse bacterial communities in Shanghai.

• The functional groups were associated with nitrogen, carbon, and sulfur cycling.

• Temperature, SO2, and wind speed were key drivers for the bacterial community.

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Xu, C., Chen, J., Wang, Z. et al. Diverse bacterial populations of PM2.5 in urban and suburb Shanghai, China. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. 15, 37 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-020-1329-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-020-1329-7

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