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                            Funding & Awards
 Human Microbiome Species and Genes for Human Identification
Award Information
Awardee
              University of North Texas Health Science Center
Award #
              2015-NE-BX-K006
Funding Category
              Competitive
Location
                    Fort Worth, TX
Awardee County
              Tarrant
Congressional District
              12
Status
              Closed
Funding First Awarded
              2015
Total funding (to date)
              $589,701
Original Solicitation
              NIJ FY 15 Research and Development in Forensic Science for Criminal Justice Purposes
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2015, $589,701)
As submitted by the proposer: 

People transfer their DNA onto objects (i.e., touch DNA). Therefore, a signature is left that can be exploited to determine the identity of an individual who may have handled an object. Forensic DNA typing characterizes genetic signatures from human biological samples. To attempt to obtain results from trace level samples, methodology modifications are made that increase the sensitivity of detection of current DNA typing methods. Collectively, the methods are known as low copy number (LCN) typing. Under LCN typing, limited template analyses suffer  from  exaggerated  stochastic  effects  and  with  increased  sensitivity  there  is  a  greater potential for contamination. This lack of reproducibility with LCN typing results has not deterred the interest in LCN typing and its potential use for developing investigative lead purposes. One way  to  partially  overcome  the  limitations  of  LCN  typing  methodology  is  to  employ  an orthogonal approach. The human microbiome may provide that orthogonal approach to enable more robust results from trace level or touch biological evidence for source identification. In fact, humans carry 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells, and thus it is conceivable that more bacterial genomes are deposited than human cells on touched items. Diversity data are becoming available to define the communities that make up the human microbiome. Although the human microbiome has a wide range of functions and is quite variable, there are some common species among humans.  However,  little  work  has  been  carried  out  on  what microorganisms are common to all humans, how individualizing a composite bacterial DNA profile  may  be,  and  what  portion  of  these  common  human  microbiome  species  are  stable throughout an individuals lifetime (or at least for reasonably long time periods). To answer these questions a defined set of genetic markers are needed to develop an assay to identify at species level such bacteria and then a set of bacterial species can be assayed to determine those microorganisms best suited for human identity testing. This proposal intends to assess 192 housekeeping genes for species level identification of complex bacterial communities and then select a panel of these genes to screen human subjects to determine the most abundant species that are common to all subjects. The candidate species genetic housekeeping gene sequence profiles of the selected species will be analyzed to determine the discrimination power which in
turn will provide information on the potential individualization of their human host.

This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law.

ca/ncf



  
Grant-Funded Publications
        
                      Determining Informative Microbial Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms for Human Identification
                  Population Informative Markers Selected Using Wright's Fixation Index and Machine Learning Improves Human Identification Using the Skin Microbiome
                  The Forensic Microbiome: The Invisible Traces We Leave Behind
                  Skin Microbe Colonies Used for Human Identification
                  Forensic Human Identification With Targeted Microbiome Markers Using Nearest Neighbor Classification
                  Human Microbiome Species and Genes for Human Identification
                  Targeted Sequencing of Clade-Specific Markers From Skin Microbiomes for Forensic Human Identification
                  Forensic Human Identification Using Skin Microbiomes

  
Date Created: September 21, 2015
    
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