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Effects of Extended Postmortem Interval on Microbial Communities in Organs of the Human Cadaver

Human thanatomicrobiota studies have shown that microorganisms inhabit and proliferate externally and internally throughout the body and are the primary mediators of putrefaction after death. Yet little is known about the source and diversity of the thanatomicrobiome or the underlying factors leadin...

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Autores principales: Lutz, Holly, Vangelatos, Alexandria, Gottel, Neil, Osculati, Antonio, Visona, Silvia, Finley, Sheree J., Gilbert, Jack A., Javan, Gulnaz T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7752770/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33363519
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.569630
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author Lutz, Holly
Vangelatos, Alexandria
Gottel, Neil
Osculati, Antonio
Visona, Silvia
Finley, Sheree J.
Gilbert, Jack A.
Javan, Gulnaz T.
author_facet Lutz, Holly
Vangelatos, Alexandria
Gottel, Neil
Osculati, Antonio
Visona, Silvia
Finley, Sheree J.
Gilbert, Jack A.
Javan, Gulnaz T.
author_sort Lutz, Holly
collection PubMed
description Human thanatomicrobiota studies have shown that microorganisms inhabit and proliferate externally and internally throughout the body and are the primary mediators of putrefaction after death. Yet little is known about the source and diversity of the thanatomicrobiome or the underlying factors leading to delayed decomposition exhibited by reproductive organs. The use of the V4 hypervariable region of bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequences for taxonomic classification (“barcoding”) and phylogenetic analyses of human postmortem microbiota has recently emerged as a possible tool in forensic microbiology. The goal of this study was to apply a 16S rRNA barcoding approach to investigate variation among different organs, as well as the extent to which microbial associations among different body organs in human cadavers can be used to predict forensically important determinations, such as cause and time of death. We assessed microbiota of organ tissues including brain, heart, liver, spleen, prostate, and uterus collected at autopsy from criminal casework of 40 Italian cadavers with times of death ranging from 24 to 432 h. Both the uterus and prostate had a significantly higher alpha diversity compared to other anatomical sites, and exhibited a significantly different microbial community composition from non-reproductive organs, which we found to be dominated by the bacterial orders MLE1-12, Saprospirales, and Burkholderiales. In contrast, reproductive organs were dominated by Clostridiales, Lactobacillales, and showed a marked decrease in relative abundance of MLE1-12. These results provide insight into the observation that the uterus and prostate are the last internal organs to decay during human decomposition. We conclude that distinct community profiles of reproductive versus non-reproductive organs may help guide the application of forensic microbiology tools to investigations of human cadavers.
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spelling pubmed-77527702020-12-23 Effects of Extended Postmortem Interval on Microbial Communities in Organs of the Human Cadaver Lutz, Holly Vangelatos, Alexandria Gottel, Neil Osculati, Antonio Visona, Silvia Finley, Sheree J. Gilbert, Jack A. Javan, Gulnaz T. Front Microbiol Microbiology Human thanatomicrobiota studies have shown that microorganisms inhabit and proliferate externally and internally throughout the body and are the primary mediators of putrefaction after death. Yet little is known about the source and diversity of the thanatomicrobiome or the underlying factors leading to delayed decomposition exhibited by reproductive organs. The use of the V4 hypervariable region of bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequences for taxonomic classification (“barcoding”) and phylogenetic analyses of human postmortem microbiota has recently emerged as a possible tool in forensic microbiology. The goal of this study was to apply a 16S rRNA barcoding approach to investigate variation among different organs, as well as the extent to which microbial associations among different body organs in human cadavers can be used to predict forensically important determinations, such as cause and time of death. We assessed microbiota of organ tissues including brain, heart, liver, spleen, prostate, and uterus collected at autopsy from criminal casework of 40 Italian cadavers with times of death ranging from 24 to 432 h. Both the uterus and prostate had a significantly higher alpha diversity compared to other anatomical sites, and exhibited a significantly different microbial community composition from non-reproductive organs, which we found to be dominated by the bacterial orders MLE1-12, Saprospirales, and Burkholderiales. In contrast, reproductive organs were dominated by Clostridiales, Lactobacillales, and showed a marked decrease in relative abundance of MLE1-12. These results provide insight into the observation that the uterus and prostate are the last internal organs to decay during human decomposition. We conclude that distinct community profiles of reproductive versus non-reproductive organs may help guide the application of forensic microbiology tools to investigations of human cadavers. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-12-08 /pmc/articles/PMC7752770/ /pubmed/33363519 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.569630 Text en Copyright © 2020 Lutz, Vangelatos, Gottel, Osculati, Visona, Finley, Gilbert and Javan. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Microbiology
Lutz, Holly
Vangelatos, Alexandria
Gottel, Neil
Osculati, Antonio
Visona, Silvia
Finley, Sheree J.
Gilbert, Jack A.
Javan, Gulnaz T.
Effects of Extended Postmortem Interval on Microbial Communities in Organs of the Human Cadaver
title Effects of Extended Postmortem Interval on Microbial Communities in Organs of the Human Cadaver
title_full Effects of Extended Postmortem Interval on Microbial Communities in Organs of the Human Cadaver
title_fullStr Effects of Extended Postmortem Interval on Microbial Communities in Organs of the Human Cadaver
title_full_unstemmed Effects of Extended Postmortem Interval on Microbial Communities in Organs of the Human Cadaver
title_short Effects of Extended Postmortem Interval on Microbial Communities in Organs of the Human Cadaver
title_sort effects of extended postmortem interval on microbial communities in organs of the human cadaver
topic Microbiology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7752770/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33363519
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.569630
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