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

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, 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 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.

Data availability

The data tables and a Jupyter notebook that allows the user to recreate the majority of figures and tables in both the manuscript and the supplemental information is freely available here: https://github.com/fowler-lab/bashthebug-consensus-datasetIt is setup so a user can either clone the repository and run the jupyter-notebook on their local computer (the installation process having installed the pre-requisites) or by clicking the "Launch Binder" button in the README, they can access and run the jupyter-notebook via their web browser, thereby avoiding any installation.I've added a short statement to the manuscript -- please advise if you think it needs changing.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Philip W Fowler

    Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    philip.fowler@ndm.ox.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0912-4483
  2. Carla Wright

    Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Helen Spiers

    Electron Microscopy Science Technology Platform, The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Tingting Zhu

    Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Elisabeth ML Baeten

    Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Sarah W Hoosdally

    Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Ana L Gibertoni Cruz

    Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9473-2215
  8. Aysha Roohi

    Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Samaneh Kouchaki

    Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Timothy M Walker

    Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0421-9264
  11. Timothy EA Peto

    Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  12. Grant Miller

    Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  13. Chris Lintott

    Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  14. David Clifton

    Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  15. Derrick W Crook

    Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0590-2850
  16. A Sarah Walker

    Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0412-8509
  17. The Zooniverse Volunteer Community

  18. The CRyPTIC Consortium

Funding

Wellcome Trust (200205/Z/15/Z)

  • Philip W Fowler
  • Carla Wright
  • Sarah W Hoosdally
  • Ana L Gibertoni Cruz
  • Aysha Roohi
  • Samaneh Kouchaki
  • Timothy M Walker
  • Timothy EA Peto
  • David Clifton
  • Derrick W Crook
  • A Sarah Walker

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (OPP1133541)

  • Philip W Fowler
  • Carla Wright
  • Sarah W Hoosdally
  • Ana L Gibertoni Cruz
  • Aysha Roohi
  • Samaneh Kouchaki
  • Timothy M Walker
  • Timothy EA Peto
  • David Clifton
  • Derrick W Crook
  • A Sarah Walker

Wellcome Trust (203141/Z/16/Z)

  • Philip W Fowler

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2022, Fowler et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Philip W Fowler
  2. Carla Wright
  3. Helen Spiers
  4. Tingting Zhu
  5. Elisabeth ML Baeten
  6. Sarah W Hoosdally
  7. Ana L Gibertoni Cruz
  8. Aysha Roohi
  9. Samaneh Kouchaki
  10. Timothy M Walker
  11. Timothy EA Peto
  12. Grant Miller
  13. Chris Lintott
  14. David Clifton
  15. Derrick W Crook
  16. A Sarah Walker
  17. The Zooniverse Volunteer Community
  18. The CRyPTIC Consortium
(2022)
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
eLife 11:e75046.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75046

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75046

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