PubMed · 15161607
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Jonathan M Samet. 2004-06-01. How do we catch colds?. https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.2403002
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Airborne dispersal enables plant pathogens to travel across fields, regions, and continents, fueling rapid epidemics and emerging disease threats. Biosurveillance, the systematic monitoring of airborne inoculum, offers the opportunity to detect pathogens before symptoms appear and informs timely, risk-based management. Recent advances in air sampling, molecular diagnostics, metagenomics, and imaging technologies have expanded the scale and resolution of pathogen monitoring, from single-species qPCR assays to community-level aerobiome surveys. Integration of biosurveillance data with decision-support systems, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence is transforming early-warning capabilities and providing novel insights into pathogen ecology, evolution, and fungicide resistance. Yet major challenges remain, including assay standardization, data interpretation, and translation into actionable tools for growers. This review synthesizes current approaches, highlights case studies in which biosurveillance has advanced disease management, and outlines future directions toward coordinated surveillance networks and precision agriculture applications.
In order to gain a clearer understanding of the level of fungal air contamination in indoor environments, we have adapted and tested a method to evaluate fungal biomass. Liquid phase chromatography (HPLC) of ergosterol, a component of the cell membrane of microscopic fungi, was employed. This method permits the detection and identification of ergosterol molecules at a concentration of 40 microg/ml (n=33, sigma=5). By combining this assay with a rotating cup collection apparatus, it was possible to measure fungal flora levels with a limit of quantification of 0.4 ng/m3 or a theoretical value of 150 spores per cubic meter (m3). Measurements of ergosterol levels performed on different sites showed that this method reflected the different situations of exposure of occupants to airborne fungal flora.
Three laboratory scale biofilters filled with different packing materials (peat and sieved sugarcane bagasse) and operating with different microbial cultures (allochthonous and autochthonous bacteria) were run and monitored in parallel to assess the emission rate of airborne bacteria in the biofiltration of benzene-contaminated air streams. The effect of the fluid dynamic and loading conditions on the rate of microbial emission in the air environment was investigated by performing continuous experiments at different inlet benzene concentrations and superficial gas velocities. The experiments prove that the concentration of airborne bacteria in the effluent air from lab-scale biofilters is only slightly higher than in the ambient air. The emission rate is not dependent on superficial gas velocity because of low shear stress exerted by the gas flow. On the other hand, the loading conditions have a strong effect on the emission rate, which increases with increasing growth and degradation rate, and different packing media show remarkably different behaviors.