Study: People Emit a "Germ Cloud" of Bacteria As Unique As a Fingerprint

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday September 22, 2015 @09:27PM from the I-got-your-smell dept.

An anonymous reader writes: According to a new study, we are all surrounded by a personal "germ cloud" as unique as a fingerprint. Lead author of the study Dr James Meadow says: "We expected that we would be able to detect the human microbiome in the air around a person, but we were surprised to find that we could identify most of the occupants just by sampling their microbial cloud. Our results confirm that an occupied space is microbially distinct from an unoccupied one, and demonstrate for the first time that individuals release their own personalized microbial cloud." The findings were published today in the journal PeerJ.

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Re:Stop the presses! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-09-22 23:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm pretty sure any dog could have told you that.
Germs don't necessarily stink.
At least to the level detectable by humans.
OTOH, dogs have been shown to be able to successfully indicate which a set of samples comes from a human that has cancer. Including, falsely first thought, but then proven correct, indicating a sample from a person from the control group.
I'd suspect them quite capable of differentiating the blends of excreta from different sets of bacteria.