Funding tool: Basic research projects
Project-ID: LS12-011
Project start: 01. November 2013
Project end: will follow
Runtime: 36 months / finished
Funding amount: € 235.000,00

Brief summary:

Airborne fungal propagules from indoor sources like moist walls can cause respiratory syndroms and exacerbate asthma. Air sampling can provide valuable information on location and magnitude of often hidden mould growth. Current sampling and detection technologies are however often limited to viable, culturable spores or only provide sum parameters. Microfluidic qPCR (µf-qPCR) has the potential to detect and quantify spores at any desired taxonomic resolution. Due to miniaturisation and partial automatisation can run up to 96 quantitative assays on up to 96 samples resulting in low costs per sample. The wealth of information obtained on airborne fungal community at the sampling site allows to draw insightful conclusions on indoor mould growth. The µf-qPCR platform will prove a valuable tool both for civil engineers and scientists interested in causes and consequences of indoor mould growth and airborne fungal communities.

Keywords:
airborne mould, asthma, allergies, microfluidic qPCR