Evaluation of bacterial diversity on historical silk velvet textiles from the Museum of King John III's Palace at Wilanów, Poland

Understanding the diversity and the role of microorganisms residing on an art object is important for its conservation and future preservation. This study reports the first application of a culture-independent NGS approach to identify the total community present on biodeteriorated historical artistic textiles. The samples were taken from five Royal Apartments decorated with Genoa type silk velours and different conservation procedures were applied to their fragments. Sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicons revealed overall high similarity in microbial biodiversity. Interestingly, conservation procedures had little effect on the structure of the microbial population. Similarly, airflow did not appear to influence the biodiversity of microorganisms on the silks, as neighbouring rooms did not exhibit greater similarity in the structure of the population of bacteria, in comparison to remote ones. The high biodiversity found on silks is likely to represent the complex history of the velvets, not the immediate past. Therefore, further studies, relying on techniques for analysis of living microbes, are needed to elucidate the sophisticated process of biodeterioration of museum objects.