Highly sensitive and rapid detection of airborne fungi in space stations is essential to ensure disease prevention and equipment safety. In this study, quantitative loop-mediated isothermal amplification (qLAMP) was used to detect fungi in the aerosol of the low-biomass environment of China's space station assembly clean room (CSSAC). A qLAMP primer set for detecting a wide range of aerosol fungi was developed by aligning 34 sequences of isolated fungal species and 17 space station aerosol-related fungal species. Optimization of sample pretreatment conditions of the LAMP reaction increased the quantitative results by 1.29-1.96 times. The results showed that our qLAMP system had high amplification specificity for fungi, with a quantifiable detection limit as low as 102. The detected fungal biomass in the aerosol of CSSAC was 9.59 × 102-2.20 × 105 28S rRNA gene copy numbers/m3. This qLAMP assay may therefore replace traditional colony-forming unit and quantitative PCR methods as an effective strategy for detecting fungi in space stations.
Keywords: Aerosol fungi; China's space station; Quantitative loop-mediated isothermal amplification.