Identification of Microorganisms by MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry

Bruker Daltonik GmbH and the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ) will be collaborating on a project for the identification and classification of microorganisms from peptide and protein profiles measured by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. The DSMZ uses Bruker Daltonik's novel CLINPROT BioTyper(TM) system to generate protein profiles and to perform the required advanced data analysis.

The DSMZ is the German National Resource Centre for Biological Material, and currently stores and maintains approximately 14,000 cultures, representing 6,900 species from different types of microorganisms, including archaea, bacteria, yeasts and fungi. In the course of the planned collaboration, a comprehensive database will be generated that will include species and strains for many different application areas such as microbiological classification, clinical and diagnostic infectious disease research, as well as environmental analysis, food safety and water quality. The DSMZ will use the CLINPROT BioTyper for its internal quality control of strains, as well as for its on-going phylogenetic research in various microorganisms.

The DSMZ adopted the CLINPROT BioTyper technology for microorganism characterization due to the ability of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry to identify large numbers of samples originating from complex mixtures of microorganisms, unequivocally and without the need for expert training. The convenient and cost-effective CLINPROT BioTyper sample preparation outperforms other approaches. Moreover, the CLINPROT BioTyper system includes an easy-to-operate bench-top MALDI-TOF with a small footprint that is well suited for operation in biological laboratories that are not mass spectrometry core facilities.

The CLINPROT BioTyper system will be introduced internationally at the Bruker Daltonics Pittcon booth #3155 in Orlando, Florida on March 13-16, 2006.