Forensics

4 workflows · 2009–2025

Forensics: Attributing a trace to its source, from body fluids to the microbial signature of a place. 4 catalogued workflows and 5 papers.

Attributing a trace to its source, from body fluids to the microbial signature of a place.

Workflows (4)

Castor bean peptide biomarkers (RCB-1 to -3) (2009): Sequenced three peptide biomarkers from Ricinus communis seeds de novo by MS/MS, for forensic attribution of castor bean extracts that may contain ricin.
Host blood meal hemoglobin database (2012): De novo sequences haemoglobin from nine North American species with unsequenced genomes, with automated processing and manual validation, to build a database that identifies the host a blood meal came from.
PNNL forensic metaproteomic characterization (2022): De novo peptide sequencing plus taxonomic assignment and statistical scoring to characterize protein sources in complex forensic samples: a precursor to the MARLOWE tool from the same PNNL group.
MARLOWE (2025): Computational tool that takes de novo-sequenced peptides from mass spectra of an unknown biological sample and returns a ranked, probabilistic list of source organisms, aimed at forensic biothreat and biodiversity casework.

Australia, Sweden, USA