Bacteria on Your Hands Could Become New Forensic Fingerprint
The cats over at CSI might just have another forensic tool to supplement their super-sleek glass and steel science lab: the bacteria on our hands. A group of researchers at University of Colorado Boulder have conducted a proof-of-concept study in which they were able to accurately identify people using samples of bacteria collected from their computer keyboards and mouses. As it turns out, even the most obsessive-compulsive among us carry about 150 species of bacteria around on our hands, and those bacteria in turn carry a genome unique to that person. Those bacteria could potentially become a damning forensic tool at crime scenes, allowing investigators to gather DNA information unique to a perpetrator even without recovering any of that person's actual DNA. But aspiring villains need not worry about being bacterially identified anytime soon. As is, the process is only 70-90 percent accurate, a margin of error too wide for even the...