Forensic analysis of the microbiome of phones and shoes

In this study, 2 participants sampled the front and back of their cell phones, four different locations on the soles of their shoes, and the floor beneath them every waking hour over a 2 day period. A further 89 participants took individual samples of their shoes and phones at three different scientific conferences.

Due to FigShare’s limit on file size, the read file and index file were split into 102 and 23 files respectively. They can be concatenated using the “cat” command in Unix before passing to split libraries in QIIME. The OTU table (rarified to 1000 reads per sample) and mapping file used in the study are also provided. Requests for further data or information should be sent to Simon Lax at simonlax@uchicago.edu