Diogo Simas Bernardes Dias, Ulrich Vasconcelos, Márcia Teresa Soares Lutterbach, Cristiana Cravo-Laureau and Eliana Flávia Camporese Sérvulo
Keywords: Jardim da Princesa, biodeterioration, biofilm, cultural heritage.
Abstract: The interest in preserving cultural heritage sites and artifacts has driven the development of additional measures to protect them from deterioration, which increases over time. The Garden of the Princess (Jardim da Princesa) located at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was the main site under evaluation in this work. Microbial colonization of the garden’s walls was evaluated at two different areas by cultivation-based approach using specific media for fungi and bacteria, including total heterotrophic bacteria, acid and iron-producing bacteria. Results demonstrated that the higher cell density was detected in the sample from the higher humidity despite the limited humidity of the walls. Molecular identification of isolates revealed that Arthrobacter was the main bacterial genus in the biofilm, even though the others predominant genera have longer survival times during starvation and higher resistance to desiccation. Sessile fungi, despite fewer in number, were also quite diverse. In conclusion, even found in such hostile environment an interesting microbial diversity was observed in this study including four genera not yet reported as biodeterioration agents in heritage sites: bacteria Ensifer, Enterobacter and Srenotrophomonas and the fungus Hypocreacea.
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