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
Fowler PW., Wright C., Spiers H., Zhu T., Baeten EML., Hoosdally SW., Cruz ALG., Roohi A., Kouchaki S., Walker TM., Peto TEA., Miller G., Lintott C., Clifton D., Crook DW., Walker AS., Barilar I., Battaglia S., Borroni E., Brandao AP., Brankin A., Cabibbe AM., Carter J., Chetty D., Cirillo DM., Claxton P., Cohen T., Coronel J., Dreyer V., Earle SG., Escuyer V., Ferrazoli L., Gao GF., Gardy J., Gharbia S., Ghisi KT., Ghodousi A., Grandjean L., Grazian C., Groenheit R., Guthrie JL., He W., Hoffmann H., Hoosdally SJ., Martinhunt M., Iqbal Z., Ismail NA., Jarrett L., Joseph L., Jou R., Kambli P., Khot R., Knaggs J., Koch A., Kohlerschmidt D., Lachapelle AS., Lalvani A., Lapierre SG., Laurenson IF., Letcher B., Lin WH., Liu C., Liu D., Malone KM., Mandal A., Mansjõ M., Matias D., Meintjes G., Mendes FDF., Merker M., Mihalic M., Millard J., Miotto P., Mistry N., Moore D., Musser KA., Ngcamu D., Nhung HN., Niemann S., Nilgiriwala KS., Nimmo C., O’Donnell M., Okozi N., Oliveira RS., Omar SV., Paton N., Pinhata JMW., Plesnik S., Puyen ZM., Rabodoarivelo MS., Rakotosamimanana N., Rancoita PMV., Rathod P., Robinson E., Rodger G., Rodrigues C., Rodwell TC., Santos-Lazaro D., Shah S.
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, Using 96-well broth micro dilution plates with each well containing a lyophilised predetermined 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 highlyskilled 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.