MALDI-TOF MS and currently related proteomic technologies in reconciling bacterial systematics.

Abstract

This book chapter presents an overview and discussion of the use of MALDI-TOF MS for fungal identification. The major known limitations of the technique for fungal taxonomy, and how to overcome these, are also discussed. Moreover, this should guarantee that spectra deposited in such MALDI-TOF MS database would remain public, preferably in open free access. To avoid misidentification, these stored spectra must be curated and based on well-established standard operating procedures. The number of spectra available within species needs to be increased to accommodate the diversity and geographic differences, unique strain traits and the varied culture conditions and procedures in order to establish a single public and open access MALDITOF MS database. This could then be used with metadata analysis and artificial intelligence algorithms, to provide reliable fungal identification.

Authors Need to be Prudent When Assigning Names to Microbial Isolates

“…Advice to authors: Additional evidence must be provided before a name is given to an isolate, such as generated by DDH, dDDH, or ANI analysis between an isolates and type strain of the most highly related species. Also, MALDI-TOF [17] or multilocus sequence analysis -MLSA- [18] are helpful to assign an isolate to a validly named species. In the absence of any of these data authors should be prudent to actually name an isolate but either use the name of a species group or the Genus spp category.…”

Authors need to be prudent when assigning names to microbial isolates

“…An even more advanced step in the definition of a genomospecies was reached some years ago by insilico methods based on the comparison of genome sequences that made laborious wet-lab DNA-DNA hybridization studies between an isolate and most closely related type strains unnecessary Advice to authors: Additional evidence must be provided before a name is given to an isolate, such as generated by DDH, dDDH, or ANI analysis between an isolate and type strain of the most highly related species. Also, MALDI-TOF (Shah et al 2020) or multilocus sequence analysis -MLSA- (Glaeser and Ka ¨mpfer 2015) are helpful to assign an isolate to a validly named species. In the absence of any of these data authors should be prudent to actually name an isolate but either use the name of a species group or the Genus spp category.…”

Authors need to be prudent when assigning names to microbial isolates

“…Advice to authors: Additional evidence must be provided before a name is given to an isolate, such as generated by DDH, dDDH, or ANI analysis between an isolates and type strain of the most highly related species. Also, MALDI-TOF (Shah et al 2020) or multilocus sequence analysis -MLSA- (Glaeser and Kämpfer, 2015) are helpful to assign an isolate to a validly named species. In the absence of any of these data authors should be prudent to actually name an isolate but either use the name of a species group or the Genus spp category.…”