Exploring the Potential of Microbial Communities: Understanding their Role in PMI estimation

Abstract

Cadaver decomposition is a natural phenomenon intimately affected by numerous organisms such as insects, bacteria etc., where they use the decaying body as their nutrition source. These organisms can be utilized in forensic science to estimate the Post-mortem Interval. Forensic entomology is one of the popular approaches where successive colonization of insects on cadaver is studied to estimate PMI. However, sometime this method does not provide consistent results due to lack of insect activities during cold environment conditions or when crime scene is indoor. Recently, researchers have noted that microbiomes have shown predictable and clockwise successional patterns on decomposing cadavers and suggested this could be utilized to estimate PMI when this approach is etched with other established methods. This chapter summarizes the utility of microbial profiling in medico-legal investigations.