A team of researchers has created an AI tool that can trace your most recent locations by analyzing microorganisms. This tool functions similarly to a GPS, but instead of directing you to a hotel, it tracks the geographical origins of bacteria. Consequently, it can help determine if a person has recently visited the beach, arrived at a train station, or strolled through a forest. This innovation has exciting implications for fields like medicine, epidemiology, and forensic science.
A team of researchers led by Lund University in Sweden has created an AI tool that traces your most recent locations. This tool operates like a GPS, but rather than directing you to a hotel, it identifies the geographic origins of microorganisms. This means you can discern whether someone has recently been at the beach, disembarked at the train station, or enjoyed a walk in the woods. This opens up new opportunities in medicine, epidemiology, and forensics.
Microorganisms, like bacteria, are tiny living entities that cannot be seen without a microscope. The term microbiome refers to all the microorganisms present in a specific environment. Finding the geographical origin of a microbiome sample has been challenging until now.
In a recent study published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, the researchers introduced the Microbiome Geographic Population Structure (mGPS) tool. This innovative instrument employs advanced AI technology to trace samples back to specific bodies of water, countries, and cities. The team discovered that many locations have distinct bacterial populations. This means that when you touch a handrail at a train or bus station, you collect specific bacteria that can link you back to that particular spot.
“Unlike human DNA, the human microbiome constantly changes as we come into contact with different environments. By tracking where your microorganisms have been, we can learn about disease spread, identify potential infection sources, and track the emergence of microbial resistance. This tracing also provides important information for criminal investigations,” explains Eran Elhaik, a biology researcher at Lund University, who spearheaded the study.
To understand how Elhaik’s team can determine your recent locations such as the beach, city center, or woods using bacteria, it helps to realize that microbial communities have distinct geographical markers similar to human populations. Some data is global, while other data is specific to certain areas or environments. The researchers concentrated on bacteria that serve as microscopic fingerprints in their study.
“We analyzed extensive datasets of microbiome samples from urban areas, soil, and marine ecosystems and trained an AI model to detect the unique proportions of these fingerprints and associate them with geographical coordinates. The findings proved to be a powerful tool capable of accurately pinpointing the source of a microbiome sample,” says Eran Elhaik.
The researchers attribute this breakthrough to the vast amount of microbiome data collected from different environments, including 4,135 samples from public transport systems across 53 cities, 237 soil samples from 18 countries, and 131 marine samples from nine bodies of water. The team was able to identify the city source for 92% of the samples taken from urban areas.
In Hong Kong, the team identified the specific underground station of the samples with 82% accuracy. In New York City, the mGPS tool was even able to differentiate between the microbiomes on a kiosk and on handrails just one meter apart. With the continuous accumulation of microbiome data, Eran Elhaik is hopeful that this marks the beginning of a new era in forensic science.
“We are just starting to understand how microorganisms relate to their environments. We plan to map the microbiome of entire cities, which could significantly enhance forensic investigations and help us learn more about the organisms that inhabit our streets, gardens, skin, and bodies,” he says.
