Isolation of Pure Cultures of Skin Micro-organisms to Revolutionize Criminal Investigations—A Pilot Study

The current investigation explores the possibility of using skin microbiomes to solve criminal cases. The study investigates the skin microbial samples as a marker from four professions, that is, garbage collectors (GC), morgue staff (MW), construction workers (CW), and housekeeping staff (HK). The findings show the cluster-wise separation of Bacillus spp. in four different professions. The heat map, scatter plot and cluster dendrogram show the discrete pattern of separation of 16S rDNA on the basis of occupation. The results clearly demonstrate that the CW and GC samples may share some common features that are not shared by the MW and HK samples. Most of the CW samples are related to each other in most of the branches and related to most of the GC samples. This suggests that the bacterial communities on the palms of CW and GC samples are more similar to each other than they are to the other groups. The cluster dendrogram shows some of the HK and MW samples together in the branch. This similarity can help in establishing the link between the corroboratory evidence and the suspect and/or crime scene. However, more samples should be studied for involving it in a full-fledged criminal investigation. Studies on transient and resident bacterial communities on surfaces are crucial. This study shows the promising method of skin microbiome for forensic applications. With continued research and development, this technology could become a valuable and cost-effective tool for criminal investigations.