SoylentNews

NotSanguine [soylentnews.org] writes:

Science Daily is reporting [sciencedaily.com] on a paper [peerj.com] published this week in PeerJ which details that each person has their own unique microbial signature. As is generally known, each of us has at least ten times as many microbial cells (collectively referred to as our microbiome [wikipedia.org]) living in and on us as there are cells that are actually part of us.

Science Daily summarizes:

We each give off millions of bacteria from our human microbiome to the air around us every day, and that cloud of bacteria can be traced back to an individual. New research focused on the personal microbial cloud -- the airborne microbes we emit into the air -- examined the microbial connection we have with the air around us. The findings demonstrate the extent to which humans possess a unique 'microbial cloud signature.'

They go on to say:

To test the individualized nature of the personal microbial cloud, University of Oregon researchers sequenced microbes from the air surrounding 11 different people in a sanitized experimental chamber. The study found that most of the occupants sitting alone in the chamber could be identified within 4 hours just by the unique combinations of bacteria in the surrounding air.

Could recording and analyzing changes in our microbial signatures have medical/diagnostic value? Are there privacy or security considerations? Could microbial signature scanners be the future of biometrics? Is it possible that we could be tracked based on our microbial signatures? What do Soylentils think?

Original Submission