The next time you use the bathroom on an airplane, you may be donating a first-class research sample to help monitor infectious disease in real time.
Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark sifted through and analyzed the bacterial DNA of toilet waste from 18 international flights that landed in Copenhagen. They sequenced the mile-high fecal samples in the hopes of learning more about how antibiotic-resistant genes and pathogens spread globally.
Currently, international infectious-disease surveillance systems are updated after doctors treat patients. Scientists hope access to flight feces, along with DNA sequencing technology, will help track the spread of disease in real time and prevent outbreaks of potentially deadly viruses.
“Our work has shown that there is great potential in making airports sites where we can quickly collect data on resistance genes and certain microorganisms,” Danish professor and study co-author Frank Møller Aarestrup said in a news release.
However, a few issues could clog the experiments. Aarestrup told Mother Jones magazine that the process would cost about $150,000 in labor and equipment to run per site. But, he said, that's not all that much money, considering the global impact.
