Crime-scene drama fans might soon see a new forensic technique debut on their favorite TV series: hand-germ testing. According to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, human beings leave a trail of bacteria on objects they touch, and...the mix of microbes on each person's hand is highly individualized. In fact, through their previous work, researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder learned that human hand can contain on average about 100 different species of bacteria...and only about 13% of that makeup is shared between any two people.

        With that in mind, the team conducted a number of tests, including swabbing computer mice that had not been used in 12 hours and comparing the bacteria with those collected from the hands of the computer owner and 270 other randomly chosen people., The "closest match was to the computer owner," and investigators "said their technique was between 70 percent and 90 percent accurate."

 The researchers also found that colonies of hand bacteria remain essentially unchanged after two weeks at room temperature, and recovered within hours of handwashing. So, the authors concluded, given the abundance of bacterial cells on the skin surface...it may be easier to recover bacterial DNA than human DNA from touched surfaces,.

Although additional studies are needed to confirm that this is actually true.story.