# Source tracking

**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/source-tracking/23247
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [June 4, 2022, 4:30am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/source-tracking/23247 "2022-06-04T04:30:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Audrey\_Anne](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/audrey_anne/32/10343_2.png) [@Audrey\_Anne](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Audrey_Anne)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2022, 4:30am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/source-tracking/23247/1 "2022-06-04T04:30:56Z")

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Hi,  
I work in forensics and we are doing a study where we are trying to associate anonymous microbiome samples to microbiome from different body parts from a library so we would be able to know that the sample that we have comes from a mouth for example. I was wondering if it was possible to do this kind of source tracking with qiime2.

Thank you very much ^^

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### Author: ![Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/nicholas_bokulich/32/19937_2.png) [@Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Nicholas_Bokulich)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2022, 9:50am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/source-tracking/23247/2 "2022-06-05T09:50:47Z")

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Hi @Audrey_Anne ,  
Two possibiltiies come to mind.

It sounds like your main aim is to predict the source of a sample (as opposed to specific species in a sample). For this, I would recommend using the plugin q2-sample-classifier, which can perform prediction of sample type (or other metadata), either via cross-validation or predicting unseen samples (e.g., where the sample type is actually not known). q2-sample-classifier is currently installed as part of QIIME 2, so you can check out the `--help` documentation, or see the online tutorials at [docs.qiime2.org](http://docs.qiime2.org)

Also, for predicting source-sink relationships there is a QIIME 2 plugin for sourcetracker2, though I am not sure if it is up to date, you can see this topic for some instructions to get it installed:

> [@sourcetracker2 plugin?](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/sourcetracker2-plugin/19688):
>
> Hi there! I was trying to use sourcetracker2 with my QIIME2 feature table. I'm having some issues with the biom file I exported from qiime in the sourcetracker2 package from github, and I see some evidence that there is (was?) a q2-sourcetracker plugin. I thought I'd try and see if I could utilize the qiime plug in if it exists, to make the process simpler... however it looks like the q2 package is gone? Or I'm just looking in the wrong places! Anyway, I'm just wondering if a q2-sourcetracker2…

Sourcetracker2 allows prediction of the source of different species (or other features) in a sample. Different sample types are explicitly labeled as sources or sinks.

Good luck!