About this Research Topic

Background

Under normal circumstances, the amount of DNA left at crime scenes is minimal and DNA degrades quickly over time, while microorganisms exist widely in natural and artificial environments with their law of development. In such cases, microorganisms have a great potential to be used as legally valid criminal evidence. Furthermore, with the rise of high-throughput sequencing technology and improved analytical platforms, microbial traces from the human body or crime scene can be used effectively in forensics to solve crimes. This has led to the formation of a new discipline, forensic microbiology, also known as the microbiology of death. At present, Microbiome has been used to solve several problems in forensic science, such as estimation of post-mortem interval (PMI) and place of death, analysis of biological crime and cause of death, and individual identification. However, there are still many questions needed to be explored in forensic microbiology:

(1) How do internal and external factors affect microbial changes?
(2) Which microorganisms can be used as biomarkers for forensic medicine application?
(3) What is the law of co-succession of microorganisms after death?

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods have developed very fast. AI is a branch of computer science, and it aims to simulate the intelligent presentations of humans or animals to discover new knowledge, optimize algorithms, make decisions or make predictions about the future. It has been applied in various scientific and technical fields, such as machine vision, pattern recognition, medical image analysis and natural language processing. AI with its powerful capabilities has now been introduced into forensic microbiology for assisting the legal medical experts in their practical work, therefore, to help make better use of microorganisms for solving the problems in the field of forensic medicine. AI techniques will bring a new and potential chance for the microbiology of forensic science.

This Research Topic is focused on the application of AI in forensic microbiology. We welcome submissions of Correction, Editorial, Mini Review, Original Research, Review articles on the following (but not limited to) subtopics:
• New insights and innovations of AI techniques in microbial solutions to forensic problems;
• Application of AI in forensic microbiology, data processing model establishment and algorithm optimization and innovation;
• Improvement of microbial DNA sampling methods and other analysis procedures with AI approaches in the field of forensic science;
• The application of microbiome combines with transcriptome, proteomics, metabolomics, and other multi-omics techniques to address relevant forensic questions using AI methods.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, Forensic Microbiology, Medical Information

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