Bacteria Clings to Windborne Particles.

• Position: DUST STORMS

Israel is subjected to sand and dust storms from several directions: northeast from the Sahara, northwest from Saudi Arabia, and southwest from the desert regions of Syria. The airborne dust carried in these storms affects the health of people and ecosystems alike. Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, suggests that part of the effect might not be in the particles of dust but rather in bacteria that cling to them, traveling many miles in the air with the storms.

"In essence, we investigated the microbiome of windborne dust," says Yinon Rudich, professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. 'The microbiome of a dust storm originating in the Sahara is different from one blowing in from the Saudi or Syrian deserts, and we can see the fit between the bacterial population and the environmental conditions existing in each area."

The researchers found that, during a dust storm, the concentration of bacteria and the number of bacterial species present in the atmosphere rise sharply, so people walking outdoors in these storms are exposed to many more bacteria than usual.

Rudich and his team then explored the genes in these bacteria, checking...