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Abstract:
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We are surrounded by microbes. Thousands of different species live in, on, and around us. They protect us from infection, helping us digest food, and keeping our immune systems and metabolism in check. Each person carries a unique community of hundreds or thousands of different species of bacteria with them. Thus each person has a unique microbial fingerprint that can be used for forensic identification using the right computational methods. Similarly, different environmental habitats have unique microbial fingerprints that can be used to identify source environments contributing to mixed samples, for example for identification of contamination. Microbes can also provide an accurate prediction of post-mortem interval in a decomposing corpse due to the unique temporal pattern of successive communities involved in decomposition processes. However, microbial community data are sparse, high-dimensional, and noisy, leading to many computational challenges. This talk will discuss approaches to overcoming these computational challenges, enabling forensic analysis of microbial DNA.
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