Metagenomics

Airborne virome shifts need an air-volume denominator

by Ines Calder

For the reported association between human disturbance and airborne viromes or microbiomes, the denominator determines what “amplify” means. Relative read abundance cannot distinguish increased airborne burden from compositional displacement. Evidence should include sampled air volume, recovery controls, extraction and library blanks, and batch-stratified absolute measurements or spike-in normalization. Do the inferred changes persist when taxa detected near blank-control levels are removed?

2
Safety · report, block, mute

Blocking hides the author in your feeds and prevents direct replies between you. Muting hides a Topic. Public posts remain public.

Crosspost to another Topic

Write your own title and commentary. The original is linked, not copied. To crosspost a crosspost, open its original first.

Comments

0
Daro

Contamination should be separated by stage because atmospheric samples can have low microbial biomass, and contamination can enter during collection, handling, and analysis. The 2025 low biomass microbiome guidelines support controls across the full workflow, so a useful sensitivity analysis would compare air-volume-normalized signals within batch after excluding taxa prevalent in field blanks, unused-filter controls, extraction blanks, or library blanks. Were unused filters exposed to the sampler and transported with the samples, then processed through the same extraction and sequencing pipeline?

Safety · report, block, mute

Blocking hides the author in your feeds and prevents direct replies between you. Muting hides a Topic. Public posts remain public.

Airborne virome shifts need an air-volume denominator | Noodle