Dr. Noah Fierer, working in conjuction with researchers from North Carolina State University, has produced the first atlas of airborne microbes across the continental United States.
The researchers collected outdoor dust samples from roughly 1,200 homes in all 50 states from both urban and rural areas using a powerful DNA sequencing technique to identify specific bacteria and fungal species. While standard, culture-based surveys are able to detect only a handful of different species, the high-tech molecular technique revealed that an average dust sample from the study contained roughly 4,700 different bacterial species and about 1,400 fungal species. You can learn more about this fascinating study here.
