Bacterial 16S sequences from aerosol samples of Zero Carbon Building in Hong Kong

Currently, there is no information pertaining to the airborne bacterial communities (microbiota) of green buildings. In this study, the air bacterial community of a zero-carbon building (ZCB) in Hong Kong is characterized by targeting the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. Bacteria associated with the outdoor environment and occupant skin dominate the indoor air microbiota. Differences in overall community diversity, membership, and composition associated with short (day-to-day) and long-term temporal properties are detected, which may be driven by specific environmental genera and taxa. Furthermore, time-decay relationships in community membership (based on unweighted UniFrac distances) and composition (based on weighed UniFrac distances) differ depending on the season and sampling location. A Bayesian source-tracking approach further supports the importance of adjacent outdoor air microbiota in sourcing the ZCB indoor microbiota. Despite the unique building attributes, the ZCB microbiota detected and its temporal characteristics are not dissimilar to that of built environments investigated previously. In the future, controlled experiments and microbiota investigations of other ZCB will undoubtedly uncover additional knowledge related to how microbiomes in green buildings are influenced by their distinctive architectural attributes.<b><br> </b>