Methods for Study and Control of Built Cultural Heritage Biodeterioration

Dear Colleagues,

The world’s built cultural heritage is subject to deterioration by climatic factors, such as wind and rain, and by biological organisms, including humans, animals, plants, and microorganisms. The increased global environmental changes that have been projected will affect these processes both directly and indirectly, altering biological communities and activities associated with built cultural heritage.

This Special Issue considers methods that have been developed recently to study and to attempt to control the biological, non-human influences impacting heritage buildings around the world.

Much of the current research is directed to microbially-influenced deterioration, either by biochemical or biophysical processes. Next-generation sequencing methods have allowed for the identification of a wide range of microorganisms that were not previously detected, expanding our current view of the built heritage microbiome. Many of these organisms have unusual properties that facilitate either their survival on the structures or their ability to break down the materials, often acting synergistically. Metabolomics enables us to investigate these in-situ activities in more depth. Next-generation sequencing and metabolomics are just two of the recently developed techniques that have been applied to the biodeterioration of built structures.

Novel treatments to reduce or avoid biodeterioration are aimed at removing environmentally-damaging chemicals from the conservator’s treatment options. One such type of treatment, namely “biocontrol”, involves the use of selected non-damaging microorganisms to reduce the detrimental effects of other microorganisms. Others include the use of natural products derived from plants or other biological organisms that display antimicrobial properties and contribute to the chemical control of microbial biofilms.

In a similarly microbially-based development, microorganisms able to produce calcium carbonate, in a process termed microbial induced carbonate precipitation (MICP), are being tested as environmentally-friendly consolidants for damaged buildings. These approaches have sparked interest among the conservation community and have the potential to be implemented soon in new restoration strategies.

This Special Issue will cover these and other innovations in the area of built cultural heritage conservation, including invited papers from some of the best known experts in the field.

Dr. Christine Gaylarde
Dr. Otto Ortega-Morales
Guest Editors

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• antifouling
• biocalcification
• biofilms
• climate
• conservation
• metabolomics
• mineral cycling
• nanoparticles
• next-generation sequencing