Gohli, et al. “The subway microbiome: Seasonal dynamics and direct comparison of air and surface bacterial communities.” Microbiome (2019)

Read the article: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-019-0772-9

Video Script

Fast and efficient, subways are good at carrying more than just humans to their destination. They’re also great for hitching a ride if you’re a microbe. Subway surfaces and the air riders breathe are ideal for spreading harmful pathogens and even bioterrorism agents. To understand the factors that shape the subway microbiome, researchers recently sampled 16 stations in Oslo, Norway. They looked at how both the composition and diversity of these microbial communities changed with conditions such as season temperature and across different subway surfaces and in air. The diversity of bacteria peaked during spring and summer and surprisingly, some abundant species in air had low abundance on surfaces. Additionally, temperature was a highly significant predictor of microbial diversity both within and among samples Finer resolution in both time and space is still needed But the findings point to factors that control the ebb and flow of the subway microbiome. which could help researchers anticipate potentially harmful situations as subway cars only grow tighter.