BashTheBug: a crowd of volunteers reproducibly and accurately measure the minimum inhibitory concentrations of 13 antitubercular drugs from photographs of 96-well broth microdilution plates.

Fowler, P. W.; Wright, C.; Spiers-Bowers, H.; Zhu, T.; Baeten, E. M.; Hoosdally, S. W.; Gibertoni Cruz, A. L.; Roohi, A.; Kouchaki, S.; Walker, T. M.; Peto, T. E.; Miller, G.; Lintott, C.; Clifton, D.; Crook, D. W.; Walker, A. S.; The CRyPTIC Consortium,

doi:10.1101/2021.07.20.453060

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2021.07.20.453060

BashTheBug: a crowd of volunteers reproducibly and accurately measure the minimum inhibitory concentrations of 13 antitubercular drugs from photographs of 96-well broth microdilution plates.

Fowler, P. W.·Wright, C.·Spiers-Bowers, H.·Zhu, T.·Baeten, E. M.·Hoosdally, S. W.·Gibertoni Cruz, A. L.·Roohi, A.·Kouchaki, S.·Walker, T. M.·Peto, T. E.·Miller, G.·Lintott, C.·Clifton, D.·Crook, D. W.·Walker, A. S.·The CRyPTIC Consortium,

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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, thereby determining the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 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 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.

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Fowler, P. W., Wright, C., Spiers-Bowers, H., Zhu, T., Baeten, E. M., Hoosdally, S. W., Gibertoni Cruz, A. L., Roohi, A., Kouchaki, S., Walker, T. M., Peto, T. E., Miller, G., Lintott, C., Clifton, D., Crook, D. W., Walker, A. S., The CRyPTIC Consortium,. 2021-07-21. BashTheBug: a crowd of volunteers reproducibly and accurately measure the minimum inhibitory concentrations of 13 antitubercular drugs from photographs of 96-well broth microdilution plates.. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.20.453060

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