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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Evangelos Petropoulos
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Biodeterioration caused by filamentous fungi is often a threat to the architectural heritage (i.e. tombs and historic sites). To specifically understand the deterioration phenomena caused by microorganisms in tombs and how these are shaped due to various environmental factors, the fungal communities in the coffin chamber of the Chinese emperor Yang (BC 569-618) were investigated at different heights using denaturant gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) fingerprinting. The associated environmental conditions, such as humidity, temperature, height and illumination, were also assessed. The results showed that a great diversity of fungal species (Cordyceps, Fusarium, Harpochytrium, Emericellopsis, Volutella, Cladosporium, Stachybotrys, Trichoderma, Cochlonema and two unknown fungal species) was present in emperor Yang’s coffin chamber. The predominant species were Stachybotrys, Fusarium, Trichoderma and Cochlonema. Redundancy analysis (RDA) indicated that humidity, temperature, height and illumination were the most significantly related factors shaping the fungal communities. Humidity showed the highest degree of variance description (19.2%) than all other environmental factors, followed by illumination (18.3%) and height (12.8%). Furthermore, fungal richness and diversity indices showed a positive correlation with humidity (p<0.05). These results help in understanding the fungal community in tombs, promoting the mitigation of deterioration phenomena of such building heritage for the present and future.
Author(s): Li Y, Huang Z, Petropoulos E, Ma Y, Shen Y
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Scientific Reports
Year: 2020
Volume: 10
Online publication date: 21/05/2020
Acceptance date: 01/05/2020
Date deposited: 01/06/2020
ISSN (electronic): 2045-2322
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65478-z
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-65478-z
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