TY - JOUR T1 - Forensic microbial system for high-resolution object provenance JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2020.03.14.990804 SP - 2020.03.14.990804 AU - Jason Qian AU - Zhi-xiang Lu AU - Christopher P. Mancuso AU - Han-Ying Jhuang AU - Rocío del Carmen Barajas-Ornelas AU - Sarah Boswell AU - Fernando H. Ramírez-Guadiana AU - Victoria Jones AU - Akhila Sonti AU - Kole Sedlack AU - Lior Artzi AU - Giyoung Jung AU - Mohammad Arammash AU - Michael Melfi AU - Lorena Lyon AU - Siân V. Owen AU - Michael Baym AU - Ahmad S. Khalil AU - Pamela Silver AU - David Rudner AU - Michael Springer Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/16/2020.03.14.990804.abstract N2 - 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. ER -