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The study objective was to describe the formation of forensic microbiological examination as an analysis of a new type, defined as the detection and registration of reliably measured environmental and physiological changes within the microbial community of corpse in order to substantiate the possibility of using microbiological parameters to establish the prescription of death coming. It has been determined that the knowledge of the patterns of interaction of a human and his corpse with endogenous and exogenous flora provides the basis for solving a number of traditional and new application-oriented expert tasks and the allocation of such a variety of forensic examination as forensic microbiological examination. Endogenous and exogenous human flora and its interaction with living and dead biological tissues are the objects of this kind of examination, and the dynamic patterns of such interaction are the subject of study. One of the initial relevant tasks of forensic microbiological examination consists in development of methods, adequate for the expert task to be solved, choice of the research «target», «models» for comparative analysis and medium, adequate for task in hand, as well as certification of these methods and standardization of assessment criteria for the obtained results.

Phenotypic signs of dominants isolated from the surface of bony remnants from the historic burial site were analyzed in order to expand data on the biodiversity of microorganisms in the microbial flora of bony remnants and to assess the possibility of using the results of microbiological analysis in the evidence base of forensic examination and forensic archaeology. It was detected that only Deuteromycota and Eubacteria colonized all types of surfaces in the samples of bone fragments from the historic burial site (with the age in the range of 90-95 years); with the abundance of micromycetes, the proportion of Eubacteria naturally decreased, while with the increased bacterial background counts the rate of micromycetes detection decreased. The insignificant amount of nutrients in the bony remnants led to the decrease in the number and biological diversity of microorganisms contaminating them; species adapted to a hard-to-reach organic substrate dominated there. During the process of bony remnants decomposition, when the conditions of their location changed, inter-species competition and specific recolonization occurred by species of microorganisms most adapted to a hard-to-reach organic substrate in the abiotic and biotic conditions of existence given. The results obtained are important for the descriptive ecology and biology of specific groups of microorganisms in the postmortem microbiome and form the basis for a more thorough study of complex communications between species of microorganisms in the necrobiome of bony remnants - in the future it will allow putting forward original hypotheses about the involvement of microbes in the circulation of matter and energy, as well as to apply the information obtained in the evidence base of forensic examination and forensic archaeology.

The article is devoted to the history of Professor D.D. Lokhov Department of Pathological Anatomy with a course of forensic medicine of the St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University of the Ministry of Health of Russia, founded by one of founders of the national pathological anatomy of childhood and adolescence, Professor D.D. Lokhov, whose name has been awarded to the Department since 2022. The updated advances of the Department in research, teaching and diagnostic activity are presented.

The aim of this work is to monitor the state of the proteolytic community in time and space for the subsequent development of approaches to an objective assessment of the late postmortem period. The study proposes a combination of standard bacterioscopic and bacteriological research methods with methods of molecular biology and genetics, which make it possible to identify species and strains of mammalian corpses' proteolytics at the level of specific DNA or RNA. On the basis of phenotypic traits and a comparative analysis of the nucleotide sequences of genes encoding 16S rRNA, the species belonging of the isolated strains was proved. The set of methods' combination, including traditional microbiological analysis and molecular genetic studies, seems promising both for the purpose of substantiating and widespread use of microbiological methods in forensic medical practice, and for development an objective scientific base for establishing the cause-and-effect patterns of microbial transformation of organic matter in nature.

The objective of the present study was to demonstrate the possibility of the diagnostics of prescription of death coming (PDC) based on the results of the studies with the application of the entomological and microbiological methods. The entomological materials included larvae of two dipteran species Stearibia nigriceps (Piophilidae) and Fannia vesparia (Fanniidae) collected from bone tissue fragments and the bony bed. The detailed investigation of the succession of necrophilic insects taking place in the course of decomposition of organic matter and the development of the preimaginal stages of the dipterans made it possible to determine the duration of the period during which the corpse remained in the ambient environment. The microbiological studies made it possible to determine the composition of necrobiome of the bone remains. It included, among other things, the association of soil bacterial forms belonging to the orders Actinomycetales, Pseudomonadales, and Aeromonadales in the combination with the fungi of the order Endomycetales. The enteral microorganisms that trigger putrefaction at the early stages of corpse decomposition were totally absent in the remains that hosted soil microorganisms destroying the hard tissues. The predominance of Actinobacteria in the samples of bone remains gave evidence of active disintegration of the skeletal tissues by the bacterial species inhabiting the local soil milieu. The study demonstrated that the results of the analysis of the microbial constituent of the washouts from the surfaces of the skull and the left upper arm bone of the human corpse were consistent with the conclusion about the prescription of death coming based on the entomological data. It is agued that the development of the methods for the diagnostics of prescription of death coming, including those to be used for the examination of the skeletonized corpses, based on the results of the entomological and microbiological investigations has good prospects as an area of research in the field of forensic medicine.