Project Urban Microbes in Asia (PUMA) is a community science project where participants get to collect environmental samples and send it back to our lab for processing. These samples will be analysed for the presence of clinically relevant microbes, and antimicrobial resistance genes. The project progress will be made available on our lab website so that they can track their contributions.

More than half of Asia’s population lives in cities, where microbes adapt to pollutants, habitats, and vectors, posing potential threats, including diseases. However, they also offer an untapped source of microbial diversity with potential benefits such as new drugs and anti-pollutants

• In 1H2023, we are collecting samples from Roads and Canals.
• We are trying to culture and isolate new species and strains of Acinetobacter, a bacterium that is related to A. baumannii that can cause wound infections and pneumonia.
• We want to understand whether genes for antibiotic resistance originate in the environment and whether they cause a risk to susceptible individuals.

Participants must be aged 13 years old and above. Parental or guardian consent must be obtained for those aged 16 years old and below. Sign up here to join as a community scientist.

Participants will be issued with a pack of sampling kit. You can refer to this online guide on the sampling process.

While we encourage participants to utilise the entire sampling kit, we know that sampling can be challenging. You can mail your existing samples back to us for processing.

You can contact us at lkc-puma@ntu.edu.sg to request for more sampling kits after sending in your current batch of samples. We will arrange with you separately to post them to you, or collect from LKCMedicine Experimental Medicine Building.

Local participants in Singapore can mail the samples back using the postage-paid envelope. Remember to double-bag the samples using the Ziploc bags provided in the sampling kit. Simply post the sealed envelope in any SingPost Posting Box.

Our team of researchers will analyse the samples in our state-of-the-art facilities. The samples are cultured in various types of nutrient broths and agar to isolate bacteria and viruses of interest. PCR is done to identify their species. Testing of isolated bacteria for antibiotic sensitivity and growth behaviour is done. The whole genomes of interesting strains and species will be DNA sequenced for complete bioinformatic analysis. Samples are frozen for long term archiving.

We provide live updates on our website. You can visit the page to see your samples added here after you have mailed us the samples. Thank you for being part of Project PUMA!

We welcome interested educational institutes or organisations to collaborate with us to expand our outreach and empower more community scientists. Feel free to email us at lkc-puma@ntu.edu.sg