Application of Microbiome in Forensics

Abstract

Recent advances in next-generation sequencing technologies and improvements in bioinformatics have expanded the scope of microbiome analysis as a forensic tool. Microbiome research is concerned with the study of the compositional profile and diversity of microbial flora as well as the interactions between microbes, hosts, and the environment. It has opened up many new possibilities for forensic analysis. In this review, we discuss various applications of microbiome in forensics, including identification of individuals, geolocation inference, and post-mortem interval (PMI) estimation.