Abstract
Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass-spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) based biotyping is an emerging technique for high-throughput and rapid microbial identification. Due to its relatively higher accuracy, comprehensive database of clinically important microorganisms and low-cost compared to other microbial identification methods, MALDI-TOF MS has started replacing existing practices prevalent in clinical diagnosis. However, applicability of MALDI-TOF MS in the area of microbial ecology research is still limited mainly due to the lack of data on non-clinical microorganisms. Intense research activities on cultivation of microbial diversity by conventional as well as by innovative and high-throughput methods has substantially increased the number of microbial species known today. This important area of research is in urgent need of rapid and reliable method(s) for characterization and de-replication of microorganisms from various ecosystems. MALDI-TOF MS based characterization, in our opinion, appears to be the most suitable technique for such studies. Reliability of MALDI-TOF MS based identification method depends mainly on accuracy and width of reference databases, which need continuous expansion and improvement. In this review, we propose a common strategy to generate MALDI-TOF MS spectral database and advocated its sharing, and also discuss the role of MALDI-TOF MS based high-throughput microbial identification in microbial ecology studies.
Highlights
Microorganisms are ubiquitous in all ecosystems, are intimately associated with environmental sustainability and human development, and perform various ecological functions
This approach was used to study the microbial diversity of three stool samples, and a total of 340 species of bacteria were identified using MALDI-TOF MS among 32,500 colonies, of which 174 species were recorded for the first time in the human gut (Lagier et al, 2012)
MALDI-TOF MS is a powerful, cost effective, rapid, and robust technique for identification of microorganisms. Results obtained by this technique are comparable to, if not better than, those obtained by other time consuming and expensive methods of microbial identification
Summary
Microorganisms are ubiquitous in all ecosystems, are intimately associated with environmental sustainability and human development, and perform various ecological functions. MALDI-TOF MS has gained popularity as a microbial biotyping tool due to its speed, low-cost, simplicity, and applicability for a wide range of microbes including bacteria, archaea, and fungi especially in clinical set-ups It is becoming an increasingly essential technique for microbial characterization and identification in environment microbiology and microbial diversity studies. MALDI-TOF MS is a rapid and reliable technique for microbial identification as most results obtained using this are similar to that of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis but at a rapid rate and at a lower cost This technique is based on fingerprinting analyses of primarily ribosomal proteins, which are synthesized under all growth conditions and are the most abundant cellular proteins (Ryzhov and Fenselau, 2001). Creation of in-house database supplementing the limited commercial database has been
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