Microbes Share Your Morning Metro Commute

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2018

⏱️ 2 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An analysis of the Hong Kong metro found microbes, including some with antibiotic resistance genes, freshly disperse throughout the system each day. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.0	This is Scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher and Tagayata.
0:37.0	Every day, 5 million commuters ride the Hong Kong Metro. Human commuters, that is.
0:42.0	Because there are countless more microbes riding the trains too.
0:45.6	Yes, it seems that they are also riding the Metro to move around without paying a ticket.
0:50.2	Yani Panayoto is a systems biologist at the University of Hong Kong and the Hans Canole Institute in Germany.
0:56.0	He and his team tracked the ebb and flow of microbes in the Hong Kong Metro by swabbing six volunteer commuters palms as they commuted both day and night
1:04.8	through the city's eight urban lines.
1:07.1	DNA sequencing revealed a lot of harmless skin and soil microbes,
1:11.2	but also other germs that harbored antibiotic resistance genes.
1:15.5	And while some trains had unique microbial fingerprints in the morning, like an above-ground
	...

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