A science project undertaken by students at the Rockefeller University sought to map out New York’s subway in a most unusual manner. It was not bothered about the nearly five million people who used the trains, but rather the large number of living beings that were too tiny for the eyes to see.

High school student Anya Dunaif, a participant in Rockefeller’s Summer Science Research Program spent her summer developing the “Pathomap”. She took swabs of benches, turnstiles and other public surfaces that see a number of people passing through.

These were then cultured in petri dishes containing three common antibiotics and the resulting bacteria were studied. The scientific study showed that bacteria from five of the 18 swabs she tested grew in spite of the presence of either ampicillin or kanamycin, and in one case, both. None of the cultured bacteria appeared resistant to the third antibiotic, chloramphenicol.

This science experiment was able to prove that resistance is indeed a major threat to modern medicine. Anya Dunaif wasn’t even sure she would see antibiotic-resistant bacteria, let alone multi-drug resistant bacteria. However that is exactly what happened.