New Advances, Challenges and Opportunities in Forensic Applications of Microbiomics

Advances in machine learning-based bacteria analysis for forensic identification: identity, ethnicity, and site of occurrence

When faced with an unidentified body, identifying the victim can be challenging, particularly if physical characteristics are obscured or masked. In recent years, microbiological analysis in forensic science has emerged as a cutting-edge technology. It not only exhibits individual specificity, distinguishing different human biotraces from various sites of occurrence (e.g., gastrointestinal, oral, skin, respiratory, and genitourinary tracts), each hosting distinct bacterial species, but also offers insights into the accident's location and the surrounding environment. The integration of machine learning with microbiomics provides a substantial improvement in classifying bacterial species compares to traditional sequencing techniques. This review discusses the use of machine learning algorithms such as RF, SVM, ANN, DNN, regression, and BN for the detection and identification of various bacteria, including Bacillus anthracis, Acetobacter aceti, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus, among others. Deep leaning techniques, such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) models and derivatives, are also employed to predict the victim's age, gender, lifestyle, and racial characteristics. It is anticipated that big data analytics and artificial intelligence will play a pivotal role in advancing forensic microbiology in the future.