Postmortem submersion interval prediction model based on the rat muscle microbiome

The rat skeletal muscle microbiome undergoes a regular and predictable post-mortem succession unrelated to the cause of death. The stable "microbial clock" within the internal tissue allows the construction of a high-precision two-stage machine learning model for PMSI estimation. Our results establish skeletal muscle as a highly promising new target for forensic microbiology, offering a robust theoretical basis and technical approach to resolving challenges in long-term PMSI estimation.