Microbes that lurk in decomposing human corpses could help forensic detectives establish a person's time of death, a new study finds.
"What we ended up finding was a lot of microbes that showed up in every single data set. These were the key decomposers at every environment," Zachary Burcham, first study author and a research assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, told Live Science. "We've given the model the microbial abundances over time, the season, the location," Burcham said."But pretty consistently, it's always been the actual microbial members themselves that the model deems to be the most important. Essentially it will look for these top organisms first and it can get most of the information or predictions from those."
Frederike Quaak, a microbiologist at the Netherlands Forensic Institute who was not involved in the study, told Live Science that the findings could become a useful addition to the PMI estimation toolbox. However, she said more research needs to be done for the techniques to actually be used out in the field.—Scientists unveil 'atlas' of the gut microbiome"In real casework, the scenarios would be very different than in their research setting," Quaak said of the new paper.