학술논문
A crowd of BashTheBug volunteers reproducibly and accurately measure the minimum inhibitory concentrations of 13 antitubercular drugs from photographs of 96-well broth microdilution plates
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article
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Fowler, Philip W; Wright, Carla; Spiers, Helen; Zhu, Tingting; Baeten, Elisabeth ML; Hoosdally, Sarah W; Cruz, Ana L Gibertoni; Roohi, Aysha; Kouchaki, Samaneh; Walker, Timothy M; Peto, Timothy EA; Miller, Grant; Lintott, Chris; Clifton, David; Crook, Derrick W; Walker, A Sarah; Barilar, Ivan; Battaglia, Simone; Borroni, Emanuele; Brandao, Angela Pires; Brankin, Alice; Cabibbe, Andrea Maurizio; Carter, Joshua; Cirillo, Daniela Maria; Claxton, Pauline; Clifton, David A; Cohen, Ted; Coronel, Jorge; Earle, Sarah G; Escuyer, Vincent; Ferrazoli, Lucilaine; Gao, George F; Gardy, Jennifer; Gharbia, Saheer; Ghisi, Kelen Teixeira; Ghodousi, Arash; Cruz, Ana Luıza Gibertoni; Grazian, Clara; Guthrie, Jennifer L; He, Wencong; Hoffmann, Harald; Hoosdally, Sarah J; Hunt, Martin; Iqbal, Zamin; Ismail, Nazir Ahmed; Jarrett, Lisa; Joseph, Lavania; Jou, Ruwen; Kambli, Priti; Knaggs, Jeff; Koch, Anastasia; Kohlerschmidt, Donna; Lachapelle, Alexander S; Lalvani, Ajit; Lapierre, Simon Grandjean; Laurenson, Ian F; Letcher, Brice; Lin, Wan-Hsuan; Liu, Chunfa; Liu, Dongxin; Malone, Kerri M; Mandal, Ayan; Matias, Daniela; Meintjes, Graeme; Mendes, Flavia Freitas; Merker, Matthias; Mihalic, Marina; Millard, James; Miotto, Paolo; Mistry, Nerges; Moore, David; Dreyer, Viola; Chetty, Darren; Musser, Kimberlee A; Ngcamu, Dumisani; Nhung, Hoang Ngoc; Grandjean, Louis; Nilgiriwala, Kayzad Soli; Nimmo, Camus; Okozi, Nana; Oliveira, Rosangela Siqueira; Omar, Shaheed Vally; Paton, Nicholas; Pinhata, Juliana Maira Watanabe; Plesnik, Sara; Puyen, Zully M; Rabodoarivelo, Marie Sylvianne; Rakotosamimanana, Niaina; Rancoita, Paola MV; Rathod, Priti; Robinson, Esther; Rodger, Gillian; Rodrigues, Camilla; Rodwell, Timothy C; Santos-Lazaro, David
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Abstract
Tuberculosis is a respiratory disease that is treatable with antibiotics. An increasing prevalence of resistance means that to ensure a good treatment outcome it is desirable to test the susceptibility of each infection to different antibiotics. Conventionally, this is done by culturing a clinical sample and then exposing aliquots to a panel of antibiotics, each being present at a pre-determined concentration, thereby determining if the sample isresistant or susceptible to each sample. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of a drug is the lowestconcentration that inhibits growth and is a more useful quantity but requires each sample to be tested at a range ofconcentrations for each drug. Using 96-well broth micro dilution plates with each well containing a lyophilised pre-determined amount of an antibiotic is a convenient and cost-effective way to measure the MICs of several drugs at once for a clinical sample. Although accurate, this is still an expensive and slow process that requires highly-skilled and experienced laboratory scientists. Here we show that, through the BashTheBug project hosted on the Zooniverse citizen science platform, a crowd of volunteers can reproducibly and accurately determine the MICs for 13 drugs and that simply taking the median or mode of 11-17 independent classifications is sufficient. There is therefore a potential role for crowds to support (but not supplant) the role of experts in antibiotic susceptibility testing.