Microbial Metagenomic Profiling Using Multi-Taxa DNA Profiling and Bioinformatics to Discriminate Soil Specimens.

Analysis of soil provides invaluable data due to the vast array of information, abiotic and biotic, it contains. Molecular techniques used to assay the biotic portion of soil have proven useful for soil characterization. Microbial metagenome profiling can produce a unique soil biotic pattern, one that can be used to establish an evidentiary relationship between evidence soil and a crime scene. This research aims to expand on previously published data and apply microbial community profiling and bioinformatic tools to classify soil from different soil types, across the Miami-Dade County and establish a searchable soil profiling database. The soil samples will be examined using multiplex LH-PCR and the DNA markers used will be expanded to include bacteria, archaea, fungi, nematode and plant DNA markers. The methods developed by this research will provide an additional tool for examining soil and the database can be used to identify the geographic origin of a soil sample based on its microbial DNA profile.