Manos: The Hands Of Fate

Even on the hands of the most scrupulously clean people, about 150 different species of bacteria can be found, and these numbers are not significantly affected by regular hand-washing.

Even identical twins who share the same DNA profile have "substantially" different bacteria living and growing on their hands.

This suggests that the collective genomes of these microbes may be more personally identifying than our own human genomes.


BBC News: Forensic role for hand bacteria.