Total RNA Analysis of Bacterial Community Structural and Functional Shifts Throughout Vertebrate Decomposition

Multiple methods have been proposed to provide accurate time since death estimations, and recently, the discovery of bacterial community turnover during decomposition has shown itself to have predictable patterns that may prove useful. In this study, we demonstrate the use of metatranscriptomics fro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of forensic sciences 2019-11, Vol.64 (6), p.1707-1719
Main Authors: Burcham, Zachary M., Cowick, Caitlyn A., Baugher, Courtney N., Pechal, Jennifer L., Schmidt, Carl J., Rosch, Jason W., Benbow, M. Eric, Jordan, Heather R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Bacteria
Bacterial Physiological Phenomena
Biomarkers
Bone Marrow - microbiology
Clostridium perfringens - genetics
Clostridium perfringens - physiology
Communities
Decomposition
decomposition ecology
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
forensic science
Heart - microbiology
Host Microbial Interactions
Intestines - microbiology
Metabolism
metatranscriptomics
Mice
Microorganisms
Models, Animal
necrobiome
Polymerase Chain Reaction
Postmortem Changes
postmortem interval
postmortem microbiome
Redundancy
Reliability analysis
Ribonucleic acid
RNA
RNA, Bacterial - analysis
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S
Staphylococcus aureus - genetics
Staphylococcus aureus - physiology
Stomach - microbiology
Vertebrates
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Summary:Multiple methods have been proposed to provide accurate time since death estimations, and recently, the discovery of bacterial community turnover during decomposition has shown itself to have predictable patterns that may prove useful. In this study, we demonstrate the use of metatranscriptomics from the postmortem microbiome to simultaneously obtain community structure and functional data across postmortem intervals (PMIs). We found that bacterial succession patterns reveal similar trends as detected through DNA analysis, such as increasing Clostridiaceae as decomposition occurs, strengthening the reliability of total RNA community analyses. We also provide one of the first analyses of RNA transcripts to characterize bacterial metabolic pathways during decomposition. We found distinct pathways, such as amino acid metabolism, to be strongly up‐regulated with increasing PMIs. Elucidating the metabolic activity of postmortem microbial communities provides the first steps to discovering postmortem functional biomarkers since functional redundancy across bacteria may reduce host individual microbiome variability.
ISSN:0022-1198
1556-4029
DOI:10.1111/1556-4029.14083