Abstract
The metro is one of the more representative urban transportation systems of Mexico City, and it transports approximately 4.5 million commuters every day. Large crowds promote the exchange of microbes between humans. In this study, we determined the bacterial diversity profile of the Mexico City metro by massive sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. We identified a total of 50,174 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and 1058 genera. The metro microbiome was dominated by the phylum Actinobacteria and by the genera Cutibacterium (15%) (C. acnes 13%), Corynebacterium (13%), Streptococcus (9%), and Staphylococcus (5%) (S. epidermidis; 4%), reflecting the microbe composition of healthy human skin. The metro likely microbial sources were skin, dust, saliva, and vaginal, with no fecal contribution detected. A total of 420 bacterial genera were universal to the twelve metro lines tested, and those genera contributed to 99.10% of the abundance. The annual 1.6 billion ridership makes this public transport a main hub for microbe-host-environment interactions. Finally, this study shows that the microbial composition of the Mexico City metro comes from a mixture of environmental and human sources and that commuters are exposed to healthy composition of the human microbiota.
Highlights
The metro is one of the more representative urban transportation systems of Mexico City, and it transports approximately 4.5 million commuters every day
We revealed the bacterial diversity profile of the Mexico City metro with generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene
We studied the twelve Mexico City metro lines and analyzed 47 samples for this study (Fig. 1)
Summary
The metro is one of the more representative urban transportation systems of Mexico City, and it transports approximately 4.5 million commuters every day. Mexico City’s metro has more than 4 million users every day, totaling 1,647,475,013 users annually (https://metro.cdmx.gob.mx/) and is the second busiest metro of the American continent, after New York City’s, and the ninth busiest in the world[1] It has been in use since 1969 and today has 12 lines and 196 stations; it travels through a network of 226.5 km and operates 365 days of the year, covering a radius of around 10 km around the urban sprawl of Mexico City. Terminal stations connect the inner city to suburban areas, where most of the population lives During this mass movement, passengers breathe the same air and touch the same surfaces, promoting a large-scale interchange of human and environmental microbiota. This work is the first culture-independent investigation of a metro microbiome in Latin America
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
