%0 Journal Article %A Jason Qian %A Zhi-xiang Lu %A Christopher P. Mancuso %A Han-Ying Jhuang %A Rocío del Carmen Barajas-Ornelas %A Sarah Boswell %A Fernando H. Ramírez-Guadiana %A Victoria Jones %A Akhila Sonti %A Kole Sedlack %A Lior Artzi %A Giyoung Jung %A Mohammad Arammash %A Michael Melfi %A Lorena Lyon %A Siân V. Owen %A Michael Baym %A Ahmad S. Khalil %A Pamela Silver %A David Rudner %A Michael Springer %T Forensic microbial system for high-resolution object provenance %D 2020 %R 10.1101/2020.03.14.990804 %J bioRxiv %P 2020.03.14.990804 %X Mapping where an object has been is a fundamental challenge for human health, commerce, and food safety. Location-specific microbes offers the potential to cheaply and sensitively determine object provenance. We created a synthetic, scalable microbial spore system that identifies object provenance in under one hour at meter-scale resolution and near single spore sensitivity, and that can be safely introduced into and recovered from the environment. This system solves the key challenges in object provenance: persistence in the environment, scalability, rapid and facile decoding, and biocontainment. Our system is compatible with SHERLOCK, facilitating its implementation in a wide range of applications. %U https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2020/03/16/2020.03.14.990804.full.pdf