Microbial Forensics: A New Boon to Legal Justice

Singh, Jaskaran; Shikha, .; Kaur, Ekampreet

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-4099-8_22

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Massively parallel sequencing (MPS) was applied to the routine analysis of microbial forensic evidence (Turnbaugh et al, 2007;Human Microbiome Project Consortium, 2012). MPS, which is also known as next-generation sequencing (NGS), enables the detection of low levels of microorganisms and unknown pathogens even in mixed samples (Schmedes et al, 2016;Singh and Kaur, 2020). With the reduction in sequencing costs and the continued development of bioinformatics analysis via increased throughput, MPS has been used to characterize the microbial community for forensic applications (Hachem et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forensic Analysis of Human Microbiome in Skin and Body Fluids Based on Geographic Location

Cho

Eom

2021

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.

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High-throughput DNA sequencing technologies have facilitated the in silico forensic analysis of human microbiome. Specific microbial species or communities obtained from the crime scene provide evidence of human contacts and their body fluids. The microbial community is influenced by geographic, ethnic, lifestyle, and environmental factors such as urbanization. An understanding of the effects of these external stressors on the human microbiome and determination of stable and changing elements are important in selecting appropriate targets for investigation. In this study, the Forensic Microbiome Database (FMD) (http://www.fmd.jcvi.org) containing the microbiome data of various locations in the human body in 35 countries was used. We focused on skin, saliva, vaginal fluid, and stool and found that the microbiome distribution differed according to the body part as well as the geographic location. In the case of skin samples, Staphylococcus species were higher than Corynebacterium species among Asians compared with Americans. Holdemanella and Fusobacterium were specific in the saliva of Koreans and Japanese populations. Lactobacillus was found in the vaginal fluids of individuals in all countries, whereas Serratia and Enterobacter were endemic to Bolivia and Congo, respectively. This study is the first attempt to collate and describe the observed variation in microbiomes from the forensic microbiome database. As additional microbiome databases are reported by studies worldwide, the diversity of the applications may exceed and expand beyond the initial identification of the host.

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