Dr James Meadow, University of Oregon found that it was possible to identify most of the occupants of a room just by sampling their unique ‘microbial cloud’ – the personalised combinations of microbes which they emit. An occupied space is microbially different from an unoccupied one and the different combinations of bacteria are key to identifying individuals. These findings are the result of two different studies and more than 14 million sequences representing thousands of different types of bacteria. They took 312 samples from air and dust in the experimental chamber.
