Abstract
An improved aerobiological virus sampling method was developed based on adding adsorptive nanoparticles in samplers for concentrating viruses in sampling liquid buffers. The objectives of this research were to select effective adsorptive materials and optimize sampling parameters for increasing recovery of airborne viruses, such as influenza A virus or respiratory syndrome virus (RSV). Three kinds of polycation nanoparticles were evaluated for direct effects on absorption and desorption of influenza virus hemagglutinin and DNA. Chitosan particles showed good performance in absorption and desorption for both influenza virus hemagglutinin and DNA. A subsequent study evaluated the effects of collection buffer, pH and sampling time on the recovery of aerosolized viruses using a method for making direct comparisons of three treatments. The results demonstrated that various components in air-sampling collection buffer, impinger model, and sampling time, independently influenced the recovery of viruses. It was shown that adsorptive samplers with air disperser had the highest levels of sensitivity and repeatability in virus sampling. Both unspecifically adsorptive chitosan particles and specifically adsorptive particles labeled specific antibody to virus significantly enhanced recovery rate of aerosolized viruses. We succeeded to sample low level different pathogen viruses in outdoor environments with the optimized sampling system.
