Microbes may be a forensic tool for time of death

這項研究還表明，在一具尸體微生物繼承的操作類似于發(fā)生在植物群落定植，其中“起初，雜草的物種茁壯成長-他們舀起容易吃的東西，”DeBruyn說。在腸道中分解，看來快速增長的微生物開始占據(jù)主導(dǎo)地位，對糖，小碳水化合物和蛋白質(zhì)的突然可用的大雜燴吃著法院。然后，增長較慢的是投入時間消化復(fù)雜的分子，來消費由灌木，然后長壽樹中移動，類似于一個字段的殖民大力昂貴的小動物。

這是恰當?shù)囊痪呤w的微生物連續(xù)呼應(yīng)地球的大生物群落的生態(tài)演替。而在最近的一篇綜述文章記錄繼承概念的歷史，學(xué)者們認為，法庭科學(xué)界和生態(tài)學(xué)研究社會可以大大來自異花授粉的努力，像DeBruyn的利益。一位**的絆腳石：生態(tài)學(xué)家通常期待的時候，試圖預(yù)測未來的變化，而法醫(yī)正在尋找往回趕，試圖預(yù)測死亡時間。也許這是他們開始一起工作的時間。

英文原文：

There is life after death. And it’s kind of gross.

For most of us, death means life (as we know it) is over, kaput, finis. Whatever we believe about a continued existence metaphysically, when we die, our body’s time on Earth comes to an end. But for the microbes living within us, time marches on. And if you are a microbial ecologist, that’s when things get interesting.

“Once your heart stops beating, your cells stop getting oxygen and start bursting open,” says Jennifer DeBruyn of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “This releases all kinds of great stuff — think a dessert buffet-type situation — and the microbes start feasting.” DeBruyn, who typically studies the communities of microbes in soils, is one of a handful of researchers probing such communities in and on cadavers.

The structured process of change in a community over time (for example, after a forest fire), called succession, has long interested ecologists. And the predictable series of insects that colonize a decaying body has long interested forensic scientists. But for nearly a century, these parallel fields of research haven’t had much to do with each other. By using an ecological lens to examine dead bodies, DeBruyn and her colleagues are starting to bridge that gap.

One avenue of research is the changing microbial community in the soil beneath decomposing bodies. While most of the ecological research on decomposition looks at plant litter, DeBruyn and her colleagues argue that the decomposition of carcasses — say, of a dead antelope on the African plain — may also have important implications for nutrient cycling in the larger landscape. They started pursuing that idea a little closer to home, collecting soil from beneath four human cadavers at the University of Tennessee’s outdoor human decomposition laboratory (technically the Anthropology Research Facility, aka the Body Farm).

“Stuff mostly turns to liquid,” DeBruyn told me. “You get these gooey soil decomposition islands.”