Among New York Subway's Millions of Riders, a Study Finds Many MysteryMicrobes

Sarah Billings

February 9, 2015

Chemistry D even

Mr. Ippolito

Harris, Elizabeth A. "Among New York Subway’s Millions of Riders, a Study Finds Many Mystery Microbes." The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 Feb. 2015. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/nyregion/among-the-new-york-city-subways-millions-of-riders-a-study-finds-many-mystery-microbes.html?ref=science&_r=1

  The article I read, Among New York Subway’s Millions of Riders, a Study Finds Many Mystery Microbes, describes a study recently taken on the kinds of DNA and bacteria that plasters the NY subway system. Places such as benches, doors, stairway railings and others were examined through samples taken by medical and graduate students. What they discovered was that much of the DNA taken didn’t match known organisms and very little actually related to human DNA. The 0.2 percent part that did match human genome, however, reflected New York’s diversity very well, both in human and microbial DNA. For example, an area near Chinatown which consisted of many hispanic residents brought forth many human genes of that type. Although, while looking further into this study, scientists did also find some bacteria that could be associated with disease, even though the identified diseases hadn’t been diagnosed anytime recently in the state and didn’t prove to be live samples when tested. This brought forth some argument from transportation authorities and health officials, who weren’t happy about these facts being released to the public. However, the scientists stated they were simply presenting their information and as one researcher explained, “Our findings indicate a normal, healthy microbiome, and we welcome others to review the publicly available data and run the same analysis.”

Since the subway is a place that many people, especially in New York, have been through many times, I think it’s important that we are informed about what’s actually there that the naked eye can’t see. Even though it was a little alarming at first to hear about some of the disease carrying bacteria, it’s good to know that scientists have proved it to not be a threat and, hopefully, will be able to update our knowledge of bacteria like that to protect us further in the future. I also find DNA particularly important to know about because it’s essentially who we are and it makes up almost every organism on this earth, so a lot of knowledge can be learned from this area. Getting back to the subways, by learning more about the things around us, we become more aware of our world so I think this topic is very significant.

After reading this article, I thought it was very well written and easy to follow, but could have had a few more facts to back up what was being discussed. For example, when researchers were discussing how the genes tended to match with the neighborhood, they didn’t really go into much detail on evidence of this, which would have been interesting to learn more about. More evidence and facts in general on each discovery might have made this article stronger in what it was stating. One thing that was done well was how they gave the opinion of the other side. By explaining the transportation official’s concerns on the matter, they acknowledged the bad news so they could then disprove it and erase any concerns the reader might have had, along with the official. Overall, this article was a pretty informative article and very interesting.