Published: June 23, 2021

Distribution of viral contigs
Map showing distribution of viral contigs.

A University of ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder team is part of a major international effort to sample surfaces and the air on mass transit vehicles.

Two major international journals have published articles on the research, which included teams from ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder engineering gathering samples on RTD light rail cars and at stations to document their public microbiological signatures.ÌýÌý

Professor Mark Hernandez’s laboratory is a founding member of the international consortium that executed the sampling campaign. Marina Nieto-Caballero, an environmental engineering PhD student in Hernandez's lab who graduated in May, led the ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder student teams through the efforts over the last few years.

The program was featured in a recent article in the New York Times:

Journal links:

  • Danko, D., Bezdan, D., Afshin, E., the International MetaSUB consortium with Hernandez, M. and Nieto-Caballero, M., (2021), , Cell
  • Leung, M., Tong, Q.; Bøifot, B.; Bezdan, D.; Daniel J. Butler, D. Danko, D., Gohli, J., Green, D., Hernandez, M., Nieto-Caballero, M., et al., (2021), , Microbiome