Forensic Comparison of Soils by Bacterial Community DNA Profiling

Abstract

This preliminary investigation has shown that a soil microbial community DNA profile can be obtained from the small sample of soil recovered from the sole of a shoe, and from soil stains on clothing. We have also shown that these profiles are representative of the site of collection and therefore could potentially be used as associative evidence to prove a link between suspects and crime scenes. Soil community profiles were obtained using the T-RFLP fingerprinting method that uses fluorescent primer technology and semi-automated analysis techniques similar to those used in human DNA profiling in forensic laboratories.

Does repeated burial of skeletal muscle tissue (Ovis aries) in soil affect subsequent decomposition?

“…Physical, chemical and biological characteristics of soils are most commonly used by forensic science as a tool to link a suspect and/or victim to a scene (Horswell et al, 2002;Lerner et al, 2006). However, soils have begun to receive increased attention as a tool to locate clandestine graves (Rodriguez and Bass, 1985;Tibbett, 2003, 2006;Tibbett and Carter, 2008) and estimate postmortem interval (Vass et al, 1992;Carter and Tibbett, 2003;Tibbett et al, 2004).…”

An ecoinformatics tool for microbial community studies: Supervised classification of Amplicon Length Heterogeneity (ALH) profiles of 16S rRNA

“…It is also anticipated that the computational tools developed here will be useful for large-scale and comparative analyses of ecogenomic data. Potential applications also exist in forensic science (Horswell et al, 2002) and environmental studies (Litchfield and Gillevet, 2002;Mills et al, 2003;Ritchie et al, 2000;Suzuki et al, 1998;Tiirola et al, 2003). The field of microbial ecology could benefit enormously by the development of classification tools of the type described in this paper.…”

Measurement of soil characteristics for forensic applications

“…Multiplex-terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism has been shown to give excellent results on soil. [71] TRFLP has been used in at least one preliminary forensic study, [72] where the soil bacterial community DNA profile obtained from a small sample of soil recovered from both the sole of a shoe and from soil stains on clothing were recovered and the profiles were shown to be representative of the site of collection. This method is subject to international patent applications for a range of forensic applications.…”

“…This method is subject to international patent applications for a range of forensic applications. [73] The specificity of all these techniques depends, however, on the PCR conditions and primers used, and in many cases may detect only the dominant members of the microbial community. Consequently, for forensic purposes there is a significant amount of work still to be done to ensure that the right balance is achieved between resolution and sensitivity to small-scale variation in soil.…”