What molecules you leave on your phone reveal about your lifestyle
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We leave behind trace chemicals, molecules and
microbes on every object we touch.
By sampling the
molecules on
cell phones, researchers at University of California San
Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of
Pharmacy
and Pharmaceutical Sciences were able to construct
lifestyle sketches for each phone's owner, including
diet,
preferred hygiene products, health status and
locations visited.
This proof-of-concept study,
published November
14 by Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, could have a number of applications,
including criminal
profiling, airport screening, medication adherence
monitoring, clinical trial participant stratification and
environmental exposure studies.
"You can imagine a scenario where a crime scene
investigator comes across a personal object -- like a
phone, pen
or key -- without fingerprints or DNA, or with prints or
DNA not found in the database.
They would have
nothing to
go on to determine who that belongs to," said senior
author Pieter Dorrestein, PhD, professor in UC San
Diego
School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy
and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
"So we thought -- what
if we take
advantage of left-behind skin chemistry to tell us what
kind of lifestyle this person has?"
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