“…The feasibility of classifying microorganisms by the chemical analytical method of gas chromatography was originally suggested by Abel et al (1). Subsequently, their approach has been applied to a wide variety of microorganisms, including blue-green algae (15), marine and estuarine bacteria (20), viruses (16), mycobacteria (23), clostridia (19), micrococci (11), bacilli (12), pseudomonads (3), and streptococci (2, 8,21).…”