2016/02/25 by Sarah E. Schmedes, Antti Sajantila, Bruce Budowle · 97 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · #Bacillus and Francisella bacterial research #Biology #Computational biology #Microbiology #Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research #Zoonotic diseases and public health
paper · pdf · doi:10.1128/jcm.00046-16
published in Journal of Clinical Microbiology 54(8), 1964-1974 (American Society for Microbiology)
openalex publication_date 2016/02/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Microbial forensics has been defined as the discipline of applying scientific methods to the analysis of evidence related to bioterrorism, biocrimes, hoaxes, or the accidental release of a biological agent or toxin for attribution purposes. Over the past 15 years, technology, particularly massively parallel sequencing, and bioinformatics advances now allow the characterization of microorganisms for a variety of human forensic applications, such as human identification, body fluid characterization, postmortem interval estimation, and biocrimes involving tracking of infectious agents. Thus, microbial forensics should be more broadly described as the discipline of applying scientific methods to the analysis of microbial evidence in criminal and civil cases for investigative purposes.