Project:

Identifying microbial diversity and antibiotic resistance in public versus private modes of Transportation

Students:

Angela Wang, Basant Kaur

Institution:

Queensborough CC, CUNY, Queens

Mentors:

Mangala Tawde

Abstract:

Hundreds of thousands of people use New York City’s transportation system everyday but it has long been criticized for its unsanitary conditions due to overburdening and shortage of cleaning crew. Various studies showed found samples of pathogenic bacteria; some samples even indicated bacteria potentially causing anthrax and the bubonic plague. However, during and after the pandemic, the MTA has heightened cleaning measures and implemented new cleaning technologies. Our team plans to examine bacterial species in different modes of public and private transportation and investigate their resistance to antibiotics with a hypothesis that there will be less number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (species) in private modes of transportation compared to that of public transportation due to much lower exposure to people.

Poster:

Team samples: