1. Evaluation of a Parchment Document, the 13th Century Incorporation Charter for the City of Krakow, Poland, for Microbial Hazards
- Author
-
Tomasz Lech
- Subjects
Paper ,0301 basic medicine ,Indoor air ,Parchment ,Biology ,Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Broad spectrum ,Qualitative analysis ,Microbial ecology ,RNA, Ribosomal, 16S ,Environmental Microbiology ,Skin ,Manuscripts as Topic ,Bacteria ,Ecology ,Chaetomium globosum ,Archives ,Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis ,business.industry ,Fungi ,Charter ,History, Medieval ,Biotechnology ,030104 developmental biology ,Air Pollution, Indoor ,Luminescent Measurements ,Poland ,business ,Environmental Monitoring ,Food Science - Abstract
The literature of environmental microbiology broadly discusses issues associated with microbial hazards in archives, but these publications are mainly devoted to paper documents. There are few articles on historical parchment documents, which used to be very important for the development of literature and the art of writing. These studies present a broad spectrum of methods for the assessment of biodeterioration hazards of the parchment document in question. They are based on both conventional microbiological methods and advanced techniques of molecular biology. Here, a qualitative analysis was conducted, based on genetic identification of bacteria and fungi present on the document as well as denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis profiling and examining the destructive potential of isolated microbes. Moreover, the study involved a quantitative and qualitative microbiological assessment of the indoor air in the room where the parchment was kept. The microbes with the highest destructive potential that were isolated from the investigated item were Bacillus cereus and Acinetobacter lwoffii bacteria and Penicillium chrysogenum , Chaetomium globosum , and Trichoderma longibrachiatum fungi. The presence of the B. cereus strain was particularly interesting since, under appropriate conditions, it leads to complete parchment degradation within several days.
- Published
- 2016
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