Background: Bacteria, archaea, algae, protozoa, fungi and viruses are all microorganisms. Their abundance and widespread presence mean they can be found at crime scenes. Therefore, they have been utilised to assist in forensic science investigations assisting in areas such as post-mortem interval estimation and cause of death diagnosis. Aim: The aim of this study is to assess the use of microbial DNA profiling as a tool in forensic science and to summarise the work done so far. Another aim of this research was to identify any possible gaps within the literature and to observe potential further applications. Methods: This review was performed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Search terms were applied to the Scopus, PubMed and GoogleScholar databases and results were screened to assess their eligibility for this research. Results: A total of 7 publications were retrieved for the subsequent meta-analysis. All studies looked at DNA from bacteria, with a heavy focus on the 16S rRNA gene locus. There was not a standard method that was used throughout every study, instead different methods were utilised. The T-RFLP method demonstrated that unique T-RFs could be observed for individuals and calculated similarity indexes, using the T-RF results, shows that individuals can be correctly linked to their respective samples. Although, there is a lack of acknowledgement on overlaps in the similarity indexes between individuals and the affects
this may have identifying suspects. PFGE results showed that the fingertip microbiota was too dynamic for providing human host inferences. However, NGS along with cluster analysis demonstrated that bacterial profiling of fingertip microflora could aid with individual identity. Conclusions: This study provides an overall summary of the work done on Microbial DNA profiling and shows that this technique has the potential to be used as a tool in forensic science. NGS is used in the most recent studies, inferring that this technique is the best to use at date. Performing a meta-analysis on the 7 retrieved studies proved difficult as there is a lack of homogeneity between them meaning studies were compared based on shared conditions such as the type of method used. This research highlighted that intra-species variation could be an area of focus in the future. This would allow for the assessment of genetic variation within the same species among different individuals.
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