Forensic identification using skin bacterial communities
Forensic identification using skin bacterial communities
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1000162107
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发表时间：
2010-04-06
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Knight, Rob
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fierer, Noah;Lauber, Christian L.;Knight, Rob
最近的工作表明，皮肤相关的细菌群落的多样性远远高于以前认识到的，在细菌群落的组成中具有高度的个体间变异性。鉴于皮肤细菌群落是个性化的，我们假设我们可以使用残留在物体上的皮肤细菌进行法医鉴定，将物体上的细菌与接触物体的个体的皮肤相关细菌进行匹配。在这里，我们描述了一系列的研究证明了这种方法的有效性。我们表明，皮肤相关的细菌可以很容易地从表面（包括单个计算机键和计算机鼠标）中恢复，并且这些群落的结构可以用于区分由不同个人处理的对象，即使这些对象在室温下长达2周未被触及。此外，我们证明，我们可以使用基于高通量焦磷酸测序的方法来定量比较物体和皮肤上的细菌群落，以高度确定性地将物体与个体相匹配。虽然需要更多的工作，以进一步建立这种方法的效用，这一系列的研究介绍了法医学的方法，最终可以用来独立评估使用更传统的法医实践所获得的结果。
Recent work has demonstrated that the diversity of skin-associated bacterial communities is far higher than previously recognized, with a high degree of interindividual variability in the composition of bacterial communities. Given that skin bacterial communities are personalized, we hypothesized that we could use the residual skin bacteria left on objects for forensic identification, matching the bacteria on the object to the skin-associated bacteria of the individual who touched the object. Here we describe a series of studies demonstrating the validity of this approach. We show that skin-associated bacteria can be readily recovered from surfaces ( including single computer keys and computer mice) and that the structure of these communities can be used to differentiate objects handled by different individuals, even if those objects have been left untouched for up to 2 weeks at room temperature. Furthermore, we demonstrate that we can use a high-throughput pyrosequencing-based approach to quantitatively compare the bacterial communities on objects and skin to match the object to the individual with a high degree of certainty. Although additional work is needed to further establish the utility of this approach, this series of studies introduces a forensics approach that could eventually be used to independently evaluate results obtained using more traditional forensic practices.