Bacteria once in our gut can be captured from the sewage.
We collected samples from manholes to learn about our health across cities.
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98% of bacteria from our gut finds itself in our solid waste that we flush down the toilet.
Once wastewater reaches a treatment plant, however, most of the human-related bacteria is lost.
By sampling from manholes, Underworlds captures the majority of our gut bacteria.
We collected multiple samples per manhole and aggregated the bacteria found by their phyla,
resulting in samples for 3-4 manholes per city.
Samples from four cities show variations across sites.
Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes make up over 98% of the bacteria in our gut.
Firmicutes
Bacteroidetes
The remaining bacteria present are likely from other sources.
Proteobacteria
Actinobacteria
Fusobacteria
Candidatus Saccharibacteria
Synergistetes
We measured the abundance of antibiotic resistant genes from each sample to see if they matched known antibiotic consumption patterns.
Comparing the US cities to Seoul, abundance of four antibiotic classes matches country-level consumption patterns.
Abundance of other classes did not reflect known differences in antibiotic consumption.
This emphasizes that antibiotic consumption is just one of many factors contributing to antibiotic resistance.