Plastics pollution is a major worldwide concern because there is strong evidence about marine influence on the human trophic chain. Thus, we experimented with the biodegradation of low density polyethylene (LDPE) by A. niger and A. terreus in order to increase the degradation rate without any co-substrate or photothermal treatment. Our contribution is to show how to degrade LDPE under minimum nutritional conditions using both LDPE and sucrose as carbon sources. Up to 30% weight loss was obtained by A. niger and A. terreus which were isolated from an Ecuadorian mangrove. The evidence of cracks and biomass growth on the LDPE surface samples showed the potential of both fungi species to operate under low nutrient concentrations. The outlook of the present work was focused on understanding the fungi survival under minimal conditions.
The present work reports the presence of bacteria and fungi in particulate matter suspended in the exterior of three hospitals in Guayaquil, during the month of March 2019, winter time. The isolated microbial diversity was tolerant to a toxic copper concentration of 3.1 mM. From the particulate material, a greater number of bacterial than fungal species was isolated. However, the fungal species found are related to nosocomial diseases. This is a seed study that aims to lay the foundations for the characterization of microbial diversity through bioprospecting studies, based on aerodynamic factors (wind speed), climatic factors (temperature and relative humidity) and physical composition (content of dust in the air) to correlate the viability of formation of bioaerosols in particulate material in Guayaquil hospitals. Therefore, one of the objectives of the present work is the investigation of the influence of the heavy metal copper in the formulations of culture media to evaluate the microbial tolerance. And due to the potential risk of lack of air control in health institutions, the main objective of the present work is to evaluate the growth conditions of microorganisms present in the suspended particulate material surrounding three hospitals in Guayaquil.
Index Terms—nosocomial, pathogens, airborne, SEM
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