[Music]
it’s such a unifying question whenever
you’ve been on the subway and you grab
something you’re like oh that’s wet and
why is that wet and that’s weird and or
you sit somewhere in the seat still warm
and you know it’s just warm but it still
feels weird I think the interesting
thing is that people base their fear on
ignorance and they don’t know what’s
there and so I want to try and show that
what’s there is mostly what you’ll find
on other surfaces so petha map is a
project to examine the longitudinal
microbiome or the bacteria on the
surfaces across the New York City subway
system we wanted to look at just what’s
there and no one really knew so we just
started swabbing and then sequencing
everything we could see we did the Train
and then two places at the station
usually a bench or the turnstiles on the
garbage cans or the kiosk
this covers all approximately 656 miles
of the New York City subway system and
all of the over 30,000 different sort of
turnstiles one of the real goals to know
very well what baseline and normal looks
like so if we did see an aberrant
species or bacteria we could know that
it is different enough to be able to
react to it but the obvious application
of it would be provided defense or just
for tracking infectious disease could
really respond quickly and potentially
quarantine an area to prevent other
people from getting sick not only in the
city but also maybe airports places like
that we found things like Enterococcus
facility what could be commonly
associated with a fecal bacteria as well
as things like staph and strep things
that you normally would hear of and
think oh no I don’t want that we’ve also
seen some very good actors like
lactobacillus type strains things that
you would find in yogurt or that are
normal sort of bacteria in your mouth so
you can find some things that are very
very good and things that could be
potentially bad
the subway is a mirror of humanities
surfaces so there’s both an angel and
demon on every surface somebody gets
cleaned and essentially it gets washed
away so it’s almost like the forest gets
cleared and then the morning commuters
come and drop their seeds and by the
afternoon there’s a whole forest again
that’s Reese proud of whatever people
live behind the subway is us it’s coming
from all of us so if you just rubbed all
of the subway services it would be akin
to rubbing all of the people I walk
through it which on the one hand is a
little bit terrifying gross but on the
other hand is kind of this interesting
humanistic view that we’re all on this
together we’re all in the same big petri
dish but as long as you don’t have any
open wounds and you’ve wash your hands
you’ll be just fine and even if not
you’ll probably just be fine
it’s such a unifying question whenever
you’ve been on the subway and you grab
something you’re like oh that’s wet and
why is that wet and that’s weird and or
you sit somewhere in the seat still warm
and you know it’s just warm but it still
feels weird I think the interesting
thing is that people base their fear on
ignorance and they don’t know what’s
there and so I want to try and show that
what’s there is mostly what you’ll find
on other surfaces so petha map is a
project to examine the longitudinal
microbiome or the bacteria on the
surfaces across the New York City subway
system we wanted to look at just what’s
there and no one really knew so we just
started swabbing and then sequencing
everything we could see we did the Train
and then two places at the station
usually a bench or the turnstiles on the
garbage cans or the kiosk
this covers all approximately 656 miles
of the New York City subway system and
all of the over 30,000 different sort of
turnstiles one of the real goals to know
very well what baseline and normal looks
like so if we did see an aberrant
species or bacteria we could know that
it is different enough to be able to
react to it but the obvious application
of it would be provided defense or just
for tracking infectious disease could
really respond quickly and potentially
quarantine an area to prevent other
people from getting sick not only in the
city but also maybe airports places like
that we found things like Enterococcus
facility what could be commonly
associated with a fecal bacteria as well
as things like staph and strep things
that you normally would hear of and
think oh no I don’t want that we’ve also
seen some very good actors like
lactobacillus type strains things that
you would find in yogurt or that are
normal sort of bacteria in your mouth so
you can find some things that are very
very good and things that could be
potentially bad
the subway is a mirror of humanities
surfaces so there’s both an angel and
demon on every surface somebody gets
cleaned and essentially it gets washed
away so it’s almost like the forest gets
cleared and then the morning commuters
come and drop their seeds and by the
afternoon there’s a whole forest again
that’s Reese proud of whatever people
live behind the subway is us it’s coming
from all of us so if you just rubbed all
of the subway services it would be akin
to rubbing all of the people I walk
through it which on the one hand is a
little bit terrifying gross but on the
other hand is kind of this interesting
humanistic view that we’re all on this
together we’re all in the same big petri
dish but as long as you don’t have any
open wounds and you’ve wash your hands
you’ll be just fine and even if not
you’ll probably just be fine
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