Postmortem succession of gut microbial communities in human cadavers

• DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2777v1
• Publication Date: 2018-01-13T06:39:38Z
• Authors: Jennifer M DeBruyn; Kathleen A Hauther
• Keywords: Clostridiales; Clostridia; Postmortem Changes

The human microbiome has demonstrated importance for health and functioning in living individuals. However the fate of after death is poorly understood. In addition to a better understanding microbe-mediated decomposition processes, postmortem succession human-associated microbial communities been suggested as possible forensic tool estimating time since death, or interval (PMI). objective our study was document changes gut bacterial communities. Gut microflora were repeatedly sampled from caeca cadavers they decayed under natural environmental conditions. 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing revealed that over time, richness significantly increased (r s = 0.449) while diversity decreased -0.701). composition changed similar manner towards common decay community. OTUs belonging Bacteroidales ( Bacteroides , Parabacteroides ) declined Clostridiales Clostridium Anaerosphaera fly-associated Gammaproteobacteria Ignatzschineria Wohlfahrtiimonas increased. A best fit multiple regression model, which included five OTUs, improved ability predict PMI (R 2 0.824; p < 0.001). Our examination decomposing adds growing literature on communities, will ultimately contribute processes.