What is "microbial cloud" that individuals have unique and can identify individuals like fingerprints or DNA?

ByTed Van Pelt

In addition to fingerprints that individuals have inherently, in recent years criminal investigations incorporating DNA analysis results have been carried out, but in the future investigation tools to analyze "microorganisms" may be used not. According to the results of research published by the University of Oregon, each person has its own "Microbial cloud"Is generated around the body, it seems that it may become possible to identify individuals by analyzing this.

Humans differ in their personal microbial cloud [PeerJ]
https://peerj.com/articles/1258/

Your 'Microbial Cloud' Is Like a Floating, Invisible Fingerprint | Motherboard
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/your-microbial-cloud-is-like-a-floating-invisible-fingerprint

It is known that there is a pattern unique to each individual, "Bacterial Flora (Seikin so)" which is an aggregate of bacteria present in the human body, and in particular, many bacteria coexist in balance in the intestine "Intestinal flora"ButIt affects human psychology and behaviorIt is gradually becoming clear that things etc.

Microorganisms contained in the bacterial flora release millions of substances (bacteria) into the surrounding air as the activity, but the aggregate of that substance "microbial cloud" It was revealed that there is a unique pattern "microbial cloud signature" for each individual.


The research team at Oregon University who conducted this study conducted a survey on the influence of the bacterial flora on the environment surrounding humans. Eleven participants who participated in the experiment entered the laboratory building which was sterilized with only the tank top and shorts worn, and spend a certain amount of time in it. The research team gathered the microbial cloud data by collecting the bacteria present in the indoor air and analyzing it.

As a result, humans have released 1 million bacteria per hour into the air, and patterns that have characteristics that are distinctive enough to distinguish each subject clearly in about 4 hours from the start of the experiment were confirmed. The confirmed bacteria areStreptococciAnd propionic acid bacteria,CorynebacteriumIt seems that it was included in.


Although the result of this time was done in the environment disinfected for experiments, in the future it will be going to carry out research in places where people actually live, such as a room or office in the home . Also, it is expected that research will be conducted on how the microbial cloud changes and how much it will remain in a certain period of time, and the effects of multiple people in the same space. Although it is a field where further research can be advanced from now on, when further technology is established, it may be such a time that traces of microbial clouds can be used for the investigation of the case.