Research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. NIJ Award Number: 2010-DN-BX-K243. Ficheiro de 13,4 MB em formato PDF (82 p.).

Predicting the postmortem interval of a decedent is a major task of law enforcement. Mostmethods implemented by death investigators rely on qualitative information (i.e., rigor mortis,livor mortis). Microbes represent 99% of somatic cells in and on a human body. No data areavailable on the use of these organisms to predict the time since death of a decedent, though it isknown that certain chemicals, many of which are likely a result of microbial communities, arereleased by decomposing remains in a reliable pattern. Moreover, the effects of microbes oninsect colonization of remains, sometimes the best predictor of a postmortem interval, are notunderstood. Because of a lack of understanding of microbial succession on decomposing humanremains, no standard operating procedures (SOP) for sampling and using this information havebeen developed and validated. We developed a SOP for sampling and pyrosequencing bacteriacommunities on human remains to predict the actual time since death. We conducted a series oflaboratory and field studies to achieve this end. The field studies will implement the SOP forsampling bacteria on decomposing human remains at the Forensic Anthropology ResearchFacility at Texas State University.