Colonizing microbial communities of granite-built heritage under ornamental illumination identified by MinION sequencing

Prior research has demonstrated that nighttime outdoor lighting, in conjunction with natural sunlight, impacts the colonization of phototrophs on stone facades. To gain a deeper understanding and establish correlations between microbial growth on building surfaces and ornamental lighting, an outdoor pilot study was conducted. This study compared the effects of three lighting conditions:traditional, innovative, and no lighting on prokaryotic and eukaryotic communities.The traditional lighting employed a metal halide lamp, commonly used for illuminating monuments. The innovative lighting system utilized an environmentally friendly prototype lamp called CromaLux, which combined green and amber LEDs with potential biostatic properties aimed at halting biological colonization, particularly by algae and cyanobacteria. This analysis was conducted using metabarcoding with Oxford Nanopore Sequencing (MinION).