Detection of Fungi from Low-Biomass Spacecraft Assembly Clean Room Aerosols

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.