Microbes Take Flight.

Airplanes are the safest way to travel for both people and microbes. Air travel can serve as a conduit for infectious disease spread, these infections include influenza, measles, norovirus, cholera, shigellosis, and tuberculosis.  The way that the bacterial communities are derived from is by the human skin, oral commensals, and the environment. A very important factor in disease transmission is the movements of crew and passengers. During a recent research study to see what kind microbiomes could be found within an air cabin, it was identified that there was no meaningful difference between air and touch surface microbial diversity measures, the systematic patterns stayed the same for pre and post flights. Air cabin OTU signatures for air microbiome were there, but there were not that much for individual touch surface type microbiomes. The indicated reason behind the difference in microbiomes is that each flight start and end with a different surface cleaning routines. The vast majority of airplane microbes are human commensals or non-pathogenic and luckily it was proven to be true. Microbes are already very intimidating having them travel around the world can be freighting just imagine one of them being extremely pathogenic on a flight. Remember Ebola?

 Air and touch surface microbial diversity measures and systematic patterns. 

Original Article: 

Weiss, H., Hertzberg, V.S., Dupont, C. et al. Microb Ecol (2019) 77: 87. https://doi-org.tamiu.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s00248-018-1191-3