Journal of Bacteriology & Parasitology

Duststorms and bacterial diversity in the Mediterranean

3^rd International Congress on Bacteriology and Infectious Diseases

August 04-06, 2015 Valencia, Spain

Nikolaki S1, Zotou K1,2, Iakovidis M2, Stephanou E2, Bourtzis K1, Tsiamis G1

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Bacteriol Parasitol

Abstract:

The Sahara region of Africa is the Earth’s largest source of aerosolizedsoil dust. It is estimated to contribute as much as
one billion tons of soil per year to the global atmosphere. African dust is transported to the Mediterranean regionunder
particular meteorological conditions occurring during spring and summer. These dust events, inject a hugeamount of
microorganismslike fungal spores, bacteria,archaea,and viruses. They affect visibility, climate, human health and the quality
of life. Once these particles are in the atmosphere, transformation, transport and removal can take place. These processes
depend on several factors, such as aerosol sizes, concentration and chemical composition, location and meteorological effects.
Considering the importance of airborne microorganisms for human health, agricultural productivity and ecosystem stability,
we assessed the bacterial composition during several sandstorm events in the South of Greece that occurred from January 2013
until the April 2014.
In total twenty-three (23) samples has been characterized using Illuminaamplicon sequencing. In more detail the fusion
primers U341F and 805R were used to amplify theV3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene. Sequencing data will be analyzed using
the bioinformatics tools QIIME and custom scripts. In more detaildata analysis involves the following: i) filtering of low quality
sequences, ii) alignment of sequences (SILVA database), iii) detection and removal of chimeras, iv) clustering sequences into
OTU with 97% sequence identity and v) taxonomic assignment of OTUs.Our results indicate that during the dust events the
relative abundance of Alphaproteobacteria and more specifically members of the Rhizobiaceae family arerising. The results
of the sequencing barcoded PCRamplicons will be presented in more detail and the correlations between airborne bacterial
communities will be discussed.

Biography :

Sofia Nikolaki has a first degree in Physics, University of Crete and an MSC in Biotechnology from the Agricultural University of Athens. She has recently joint the
MGM research group of the University of Patras, Greece as a PhD student and she is currently working on Microbial communities and pesticide interactions in
oilseed and sunflower.