Species-specific production of microbial volatile organic compounds (MVOC) by airborne fungi from a compost facility

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in soils

“…Most of the culturable soil microorganisms produce VOCs (Linton and Wright 1993), and it is assumed that similar mVOCs are the main contributors to total soil VOC production (Stotzky and Schenck 1976). Some VOCs are characteristically produced by specific phylogenetic groups or species and can therefore be used for taxonomic purposes (Larsen and Frisvad 1995a, c;Fischer et al 1999). In a study on degrading household waste, high numbers of Lactococcus lactis were found to be correlating to certain VOCs.…”

Volatile sesquiterpenes from fungi: what are they good for?

“…Since many strains have distinct smells it is not surprising that volatile sesquiterpenes have been detected as well. Germacrene A (10) is produced by Penicillium cyclopium, germacrene B (11) by Penicillium expansum, -elemene (14) and a δ-guaiene-like sesquiterpene hydrocarbon by Penicillium clavigerum (Fischer et al 1999) and -caryophyllene (61) and an unidentified sesquiterpene came from Penicillium caseifulvum (Larsen, 1998). Not sufficient strains have been analyzed to decide whether some of these compounds are discriminative for these Penicillium species.…”

Substrate-induced volatile organic compound emissions from compost-amended soils

“…Brown 1922 cited in Linton and Wright 1993), but recently, new detection methods have increased the potential of such studies. In addition to molecular tools targeting microbial community structure, VOCs may help to detect the presence of certain microorganisms as microbial VOCs emerge from various habitats like soil (Schade and Custer 2004;Asensio et al 2007a), litter (Leff and Fierer 2008), food (Börjesson et al 1990(Börjesson et al , 1992Kershi et al 1998;Schnürer et al 1999;Gao and Martin 2002;Mayr et al 2003), composts (Wheatley et al 1997;Fischer et al 1999;Smet et al 1999), buildings (Wilkins et al 2000;Fischer and Dott 2003;Matysik et al 2008), plant surfaces (Tirranen and Gitelson 2006), domestic biowaste (Mayrhofer et al 2006), arctic ice (Dickschat et al 2005a), seawater (Dickschat et al 2005b) and air conditioning systems of cars (Rose et al 2000). Volatile organic compounds is a broad term defining a large group of compounds, including metabolites produced by all life forms.…”

“…Besides the fact that PTR-MS has been used for the determination of soil-derived VOCs only by a few scientists so far (Ezra et al 2004;Schade and Custer 2004;Asensio et al 2007a, b), another innovative concept of this study was the use of anaerobic and substrateinduced approaches for VOC measurements. As suggested by several authors (Larsen and Frisvad 1995a, b;Fischer et al 1999;Fiedler et al 2001), VOCs could be used to identify certain fungi back to species level. Therefore, our second objective was to link specific VOCs to changes in the composition of fungal communities determined by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE).…”