Friday, February 6, 2015

If you thought “fecal matter on lemons” was bad…

Among New York Subway’s Millions of Riders, a Study Finds Many Mystery Microbes

From the story at the above link, emphasis mine:

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College released a study on Thursday that mapped DNA found in New York’s subway system — a crowded, largely subterranean behemoth that carries 5.5 million riders on an average weekday, and is filled with hundreds of species of bacteria (mostly harmless), the occasional spot of bubonic plague, and a universe of enigmas. Almost half of the DNA found on the system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome.

What.