Expansion of Microbial Forensics

Abstract

cMicrobial forensics has been defined as the discipline of applying scientific methods to the analysis of evidence related to bioterrorism, biocrimes, hoaxes, or the accidental release of a biological agent or toxin for attribution purposes. Over the past 15 years, technology, particularly massively parallel sequencing, and bioinformatics advances now allow the characterization of microorganisms for a variety of human forensic applications, such as human identification, body fluid characterization, postmortem interval estimation, and biocrimes involving tracking of infectious agents. Thus, microbial forensics should be more broadly described as the discipline of applying scientific methods to the analysis of microbial evidence in criminal and civil cases for investigative purposes.

Education and training in microbial forensics

“…Such information may help an investigator understand what microbes should be considered as a high threat and how they might have been used in a particular circumstance. A basic understanding of different microbial classes and their products would include human, animal, and plant pathogens Schmedes et al, 2016;Teshome, 2016).…”

“…Genomic analyses will continue to be essential in identifying species, strains, isolates, and individual samples to assist in a microbial forensic investigation. (Schmedes et al, 2016;Budowle et al, 2017;Karlsson et al, 2013). The rapid expansion of sequencing capabilities, where sequencing some microbes within a day at very deep coverage, has raised the importance of genetic identification.…”

The Future of Forensic Biology

“…Microbial forensics is a recent discipline in the field of law which employs microbiological methods for analysis of evidence in assorted forms of crimes which includes bioterrorism, hoaxes, accidental release of biological agent/toxin or even rape cases [33][34][35]. The vast microbial communities (bacteria, yeast and viruses) remain same except after sex.…”

Forensic DNA Technological Advancements as an Emerging Perspective on Medico-Legal Autopsy: A Mini Review

“…The benefits stemming from the extension of forensic genetics toward nonhuman relations were clearly recognized decades ago [225], and the incorporated application of animal, plant or microorganisms has been actualized in a large scale of caseworks, from animal attacks [226,227] to bioterrorism [228], as well as in wildlife crimes [229,230], identification of food composition [231,232], Cannabis sp. chemotyping [233,234], and even the estimation of postmortem interval and skin microbiomes [235,236]. Other various aspects of possible nonhuman biological evidences found on the corpse, e.g., pollens or plant fragments, can reveal potential indirect links to the perpetrator, and also additional, case-related facts, complementing autopsy information with the modality of death or the crime scene setting for purposes of case reconstruction [237,238].…”