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. 2019 Apr 9;14(4):e0215179.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0215179. eCollection 2019.

A method for early detection and identification of fungal contamination of building materials using e-nose

Zbigniew Suchorab  1 , Magdalena Frąc  2 , Łukasz Guz  1 , Karolina Oszust  2 , Grzegorz Łagód  1 , Agata Gryta  2 , Nina Bilińska-Wielgus  2 , Jacek Czerwiński  1
Affiliations

A method for early detection and identification of fungal contamination of building materials using e-nose

Zbigniew Suchorab et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The aim of the study was to develop a method for early detection and identification of fungal contamination of building materials using an electronic nose. Therefore, the laboratory experiments based on the analysis of the air in the vicinity of fungal isolates potentially found in the building materials were performed. The results revealed that the employed gas sensors array consisting of MOS-type sensors enables the detection of the differences among the examined samples of fungi and distinguishing between the non-contaminated and contaminated samples, shortly after fungal contamination occurs. Electronic nose readouts were analysed using Principal Component Analysis and the results were verified with standard chromatographic analysis by means of SPME-GC/MS method, which proved that gas sensors array can be applied for early detection of fungal contamination.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Photograph of the test stand.
Fig 2
Fig 2. PCA results for contaminated and non-contaminated samples with different time of growth, given in hours.
Fig 3
Fig 3. PCA results concerning changes for individual fungi isolates, occurring in consecutive hours of the experiment–including the trajectories of changes and confidence interval 0.95.
Fig 4
Fig 4. PCA results concerning changes in the sensors array signals for the selected fungi isolates, occurring in consecutive hours–counting from the beginning of the experiment.
Fig 5
Fig 5. Results of PCA for all fungi isolates divided into individual hours, from the beginning of the experiment.
Fig 6
Fig 6. Typical TIC GC-MS chromatogram of metabolites found in the headspace above live fungal culture.
Fig 7
Fig 7. HS-SPME chromatogram of the selected fungus Cladosporium sp.
(G13/15) with fragmentograms of characteristic compounds: toluene, xylenes, 1,4-dichlorobenzene at measurement (B) after 288 hours since inoculation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Grants and funding

The infrastructure built with European Union funds – The Eastern Poland Development Programme 2007–2013 – Regional Laboratory of Renewable Energy, Institute of Agrophysics of Polish Academy of Science were utilized in this study. Research was also partially supported by Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland within the statutory research of the particular units.
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