Fig. 1.

Publications using molecular methods to characterize bioaerosols of indoor environments. In order to find articles that had used molecular methods to detect microorganisms in bioaerosols, a literature search was performed using Web of Science™. Four search phrases were used to conduct the search in two fields: in the topic field ‘indoor OR agriculture* OR environment’ AND ‘microorganism* OR biologic* OR bacteria* OR virus* OR archaea*’ in the topic; and in the title field ‘bioaerosol* OR airborne’ NOT ‘performance OR evaluation OR inactivation’. Over 750 articles were returned, so the non-relevant articles were removed individually. Only the articles that had described the bioaerosols of an indoor environment using a molecular method were included in the graph. The final number of articles was 60. Methods were divided into PCR, cloning/sequencing, fingerprinting, and pyrosequencing, and plotted in a graph against their year of publication.