ReviewFrontiers in microbiology2020
Forensic Applications of Microbiomics: A Review.
Review in Frontiers in microbiology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed.
- Forensic Microbiomics and Trace Microbial Evidence: Molecular Innovations for Linking Suspects, Objects, and Environments.Microorganisms · 2026Review
- Evaluation of targeted Massively Parallel Sequencing methods for forensic metagenomics.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2026Article
- Differentiating hemorrhagic shock and organophosphate poisoning through integrated skin microbiome-metabolome signatures.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- The human skin microbiome: factors affecting individuality and application in forensic investigations.International journal of legal medicine · 2026Review
- Postmortem Microbiology in Forensic Diagnostics: Interpretation of Infectious Causes of Death and Emerging Applications.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Quantifying human-environment interactions through Bayesian modeling of species-resolved microbial transfer signatures: an exploratory proof-of-concept study.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Forensic applications of the skin microbiome: a structured narrative review of donor association, contact inference, and crime-scene reconstruction.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Spatiotemporal dynamics of soil bacterial and fungal communities at a small scale.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Omics Insights into Cylindrospermopsin's Molecular Toxicity.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- From Bacillus Criminalis to the Legalome: Will Neuromicrobiology Impact 21st Century Criminal Justice?Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Exploring vaginal microbiome: from traditional methods to metagenomic next-generation sequencing-a systematic review.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Review
- Microbiome Geographic Population Structure (mGPS) Detects Fine-Scale Geography.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Article
- Forensic Microbiology: When, Where and How.Microorganisms · 2024Review
- Changes in Microbial Communities Using Pigs as a Model for Postmortem Interval Estimation.Microorganisms · 2023Article
- The role of microorganisms in the biotransformation of psychoactive substances and its forensic relevance: a critical interdisciplinary review.Forensic sciences research · 2023Review
- Toward Oral Thanatomicrobiology-An Overview of the Forensic Implications of Oral Microflora.Academic forensic pathology · 2023Review
- The Revolution of Animal Genomics in Forensic Sciences.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Microbiome-Based Stain Analyses in Crime Scenes.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2023Review
- Identification of Skeletal Remains Using Genetic Profiling: A Case Linking Italy and Poland.Genes · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The rise of microbiomics and metagenomics has been driven by advances in genomic sequencing technology, improved microbial sampling methods, and fast-evolving approaches in bioinformatics. Humans are a host to diverse microbial communities in and on their bodies, which continuously interact with and alter the surrounding environments. Since information relating to these interactions can be extracted by analyzing human and environmental microbial profiles, they have the potential to be relevant to forensics. In this review, we analyzed over 100 papers describing forensic microbiome applications with emphasis on geolocation, personal identification, trace evidence, manner and cause of death, and inference of the postmortem interval (PMI). We found that although the field is in its infancy, utilizing microbiome and metagenome signatures has the potential to enhance the forensic toolkit. However, many of the studies suffer from limited sample sizes and model accuracies, and unrealistic environmental settings, leaving the full potential of microbiomics to forensics unexplored. It is unlikely that the information that can currently be elucidated from microbiomics can be used by law enforcement. Nonetheless, the research to overcome these challenges is ongoing, and it is foreseeable that microbiome-based evidence could contribute to forensic investigations in the future.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.