Variation in Banknote-Associated Microbiome Across Switzerland.. Variation in Banknote-Associated Microbiome Across Switzerland.

In daily life, currency is one of the most frequently and actively exchanged commodities among humans. We collected banknotes from 50 locations in Switzerland (10 towns, five different shops in each town), with the aim to investigate the drivers behind variations in the bacterial communities on Swiss banknotes, specifically to assess if the microbiome associated with banknotes differs with geographic distance and/or the type of shop the banknote originated from (collection environment). Each of the 50 banknotes was processed as follows: (1) we swabbed front and back of the each banknote with one sampling swab; (2) we plated a dilution of the sample on chromatic agar; (3) we extracted DNA from each swab tip; (4) we performed 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing on extracted DNA samples.