An intriguing study led by the University of Colorado
Boulder may provide a powerful new tool in the quiver of forensic scientists
attempting to determine the time of death in cases involving human corpses: a
microbial clock.
The clock is essentially the lock-step succession of
bacterial changes that occur postmortem as bodies move through the decay
process. And while the researchers used mice for the new study, previous
studies on the human microbiome – the estimated 100 trillion or so microbes
that live on and in each of us – indicate there is good reason to believe
similar microbial clocks are ticking away on human corpses, said Jessica
Metcalf, a CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher and first author on the study.