Question: As you deal with the constant death of cells, could you tell me which organs in the bod y decompose first and last?

Andrew Devitt answered on 17 Jun 2013:

The decomposition will happen differently all over the body. Once your heart stops beating and oxygen isn’t being delivered to your cells, they will start to lose control of themselves. They will start to fall apart and the enzymes and chemicals can start to degrade the body. This happens pretty quickly after death.

But there’s also the bio-degradation where bacteria and fungi will take over. The come from those parts of your body that are exposed to the outside world and have bugs in them…… lungs, guts etc. The organisms doing this decomposition will change over time though. At first it will be organisms that use oxygen but as that is used up, you’ll start to get some anaerobic bugs growing. These don’t need oxygen. But they can grow and produce gases when they grow….. this is what can lead to dead bodies get all ‘bloated’.

I guess that you can also get insect involvement. Maggots will eat the tissues pretty well.

I don’t know which tissues degrade first but I would reckon the gastrointestinal tract and lungs are likely candidates.