The role of microbes in forensic evidence is explored in a new research book from the American Academy of Forensic Science – with two chapters from experts at Flinders University.
Flinders’ Professor Paul Kirkbride, who is one of the main contributors, says this emerging field of forensic science considers how microbe action can alter the identification of drugs that disappear or appear in a body after death.
The chapter, DNA profiling of bacteria from human hair: Pitfalls and potential, was co-written by fellow South Australian researcher Silvana Tridico from Forensic Science and Wildlife Matters and Daithi Murray and Michael Bunce from the Trace and Environmental DNA Laboratory at Curtin University, Western Australia.
Other scientists and PhDs from the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences have contributed to Forensic Microbiology (John Wiley & Sons, April 2017) in the AAFS Forensic Science in Focus series.
Second-year Flinders Uni PhD student Jared Castle is the first author of “Microbial impacts in post-mortem toxicology”, a chapter looking at how microbes can affect drugs and poisons on a body after death.
Co-authors are his PhD co-supervisor Dr Danielle Butzbach, a Flinders graduate now working for the Toxicology Section of Forensic Science SA, along with Dr Frank Reith (CSIRO and University of Adelaide) and Flinders Professor Claire Lenehan, Associate Professor Stewart Walker and Professor Kirkbride.
Forensic Microbiology focuses on newly emerging areas of microbiology relevant to medico-legal and criminal investigations: post-mortem changes, establishing cause of death, estimating post-mortem interval, and trace evidence analysis.
“Recent developments in sequencing technology allow researchers, and potentially practitioners, to examine microbial communities at unprecedented resolution and in multidisciplinary contexts,” the publisher says.
“This detailed study of microbes facilitates the development of new forensic tools that use the structure and function of microbial communities as physical evidence.
“This diverse, rapidly evolving field of study has the potential to provide high quality microbial evidence which can be replicated across laboratories, providing spatial and temporal evidence which could be crucial in a broad range of investigative contexts.”
The new book is intended as a resource for students, microbiologists, investigators, pathologists and other forensic science professionals.