NEW DELHI : We leave behind trace chemicals, molecules and microbes on every object we touch and by sampling the molecules on cell phones, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences were able to construct lifestyle sketches for each phone’s owner, including diet, preferred hygiene products, health status and locations visited.
This proof-of-concept study, published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could have a number of applications, including criminal profiling, airport screening, medication adherence monitoring, clinical trial participant stratification and environmental exposure studies.
“You can imagine a scenario where a crime scene investigator comes across a personal object – like a phone, pen or key – without fingerprints or DNA, or with prints or DNA not found in the database.
They would have nothing to go on to determine who that belongs to,” said senior author Pieter Dorrestein, professor in UC San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
“So we thought – what if we take advantage of left-behind skin chemistry to tell us what kind of lifestyle this person has?”
In a 2015 study, Dorrestein’s team constructed 3D models to illustrate the molecules and microbes found at hundreds of locations on the bodies of two healthy adult volunteers.
Despite a three-day moratorium on personal hygiene products before the samples were collected, the researchers were surprised to find that the most abundant molecular features in the skin swabs still came from hygiene and beauty products, such as sunscreen.
“All of these chemical traces on our bodies can transfer to objects,” Dorrestein said.
“So we realized we could probably come up with a profile of a person’s lifestyle based on chemistries we can detect on objects they frequently use.”
“By analyzing the molecules volunteers involved in the research left behind on their phones, we could tell if a person is likely female, uses high-end cosmetics, dyes her hair, drinks coffee, prefers beer over wine, likes spicy food, is being treated for depression, wears sunscreen and bug spray – and therefore likely spends a lot of time outdoors – all kinds of things,” said first author Amina Bouslimani, an assistant project scientist in Dorrestein’s lab.
“This is the kind of information that could help an investigator narrow down the search for an object’s owner.”
Beyond forensics, Dorrestein and Bouslimani imagine trace molecular read-outs could also be used in medical and environmental studies. For example, perhaps one day physicians could assess how well a patient is sticking with a medication regimen by monitoring metabolites on his or her skin.
Similarly, patients participating in a clinical trial could be divided into subgroups based on how they metabolize the medication under investigation, as revealed by skin metabolites – then the medication could be given only to those patients who can metabolize it appropriately.
Skin molecule read-outs might also provide useful information about a person’s exposure to environmental pollutants and chemical hazards, such as in a high-risk workplace or a community living near a potential pollution source. (AGENCIES)
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