Microbial forensics and phylogenetics go hand in hand

Interesting story in Nature today: Science in court: Disease detectives : Nature News & Comment.  It details a bit of the history and current approaches to forensics associated with microbes and has quotes from many of the key players in the field.  It discusses anthrax, HIV, the FBI, Bruce Budowle, David Hillis, and more.  Definitely worth a look for anyone interested in either microbial diversity of phylogenetics.  I have been interested in this topic for a very long time - pretty much since I was recruited to apply to work at the FBI many many years ago.



I have been to a few recent meetings on the topic organized by the White House OSTP and the FBI and I think there is lots of interesting work that can happen in this area.  The development of Phylosift in my lab was funded by a grant from DHS (to myself and THE Aaron Darling who has since left to a large island near New Zealand) largely in relation to microbial forensics.



See some related posts:

• Mini post: Microbial forensics
• CSI-Miami could be renamed CSI Microbiology

In particular people might want to check out the Mendeley Group collection of references on the topic I have made: Microbial Forensics | Mendeley Group

Microbial Forensics is a group in Biological Sciences, Law on Mendeley.