We naturally pick up microorganisms as we move about the world. Now, researchers have developed an AI tool that accurately links you to a particular location using a sample of the bugs you’ve collected on your travels – like a bacterial satellite navigation system. Many of us would be familiar with how , like hair, fibers, gunshot residue, and soil, is used to forensically link a person to a particular location, object, or event.
With the realization that many locations have unique bacterial populations comes the thought that ascertaining people’s movements using the microorganisms they naturally pick up on their travels would greatly benefit the fields of medicine and epidemiology – not to mention criminal investigations. Led by Lund University in Sweden, researchers have developed a tool that pretty much does just that. Using a sample of a microbiome – the community of microorganisms that exists in a particular environment, like, say, the beach – carried by a person, it can pinpoint where that sample came from with surprising accuracy.
“In contrast to human DNA, the human microbiome changes constantly when we come into contact with different environments,” said Eran Elhaik, a biology researcher at Lund University and the study’s corresponding author. “By tracing where your microorganisms have been recently, we can understand the spread of disease, identify potential sources of infection and localize the emergence of microbial resistance. This tracing als.