2019-4-28 by Quick Biology Inc.
Microbe lives on or in people, plants, soil, and oceans, all over our planet. Ubiquitous and particular microbial communities are often associated with specific processes or environments. National Institute of Justice has been expanding funding of research into the forensic applications of microbiomes since 2011 (https://www.nij.gov/Pages/welcome.aspx). The principle based on facts that, for instances, the community of organisms found on or around decomposing remains is an indicator of time-since-death in the investigation of human remains, the trace human microbiome on our skin and the surfaces and objects we interact with will be associating people with evidence and environments (Figure 1). However, microbes were limited in forensic science in the early 20th century, due to expensive sequencing technology at that time. Now, advances in sequencing platform (i.e. NGS) has been making it possible to detect highly speciose microbial communities at an unprecedented depth, launching the field of microbiome forensics (Figure 2).
Figure 1: Microbial Forensics [1]
Figure 2: Using NGS for Microbial Forensics [2]
Are you ready to sequence your samples of interest? Find More at Quick Biology.
See the articles:
1. Oliveira, M., & Amorim, A. (2018). Microbial forensics: new breakthroughs and future prospects. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, 102(24), 10377–10391. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-018-9414-6
2. Clarke, T. H., Gomez, A., Singh, H., Nelson, K. E., & Brinkac, L. M. (2017). Integrating the microbiome as a resource in the forensics toolkit. Forensic Science International: Genetics, 30, 141–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsigen.2017.06.008
3. Metcalf, J. L., Xu, Z. Z., Bouslimani, A., Dorrestein, P., Carter, D. O., & Knight, R. (2017). Microbiome Tools for Forensic Science. Trends in Biotechnology, 35(9), 814–823. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2017.03.006