title: Species-specific bacteria identification using differential mobility spectrometry and bioinformatics pattern recognition.
abstract: As bacteria grow and proliferate, they release a variety of volatile compounds that can be profiled and used for speciation, providing an approach amenable to disease diagnosis through quick analysis of clinical cultures as well as patient breath analysis. As a practical alternative to mass spectrometry detection and whole cell pyrolysis approaches, we have developed methodology that involves detection via a sensitive, micromachined differential mobility spectrometer (microDMx), for sampling headspace gases produced by bacteria growing in liquid culture. We have applied pattern discovery/recognition algorithms (ProteomeQuest) to analyze headspace gas spectra generated by microDMx to reliably discern multiple species of bacteria in vitro: Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus thuringiensis, and Mycobacterium smegmatis. The overall accuracy for identifying volatile profiles of a species within the 95% confidence interval for the two highest accuracy models evolved was between 70.4 and 89.3% based upon the coordinated expression of between 5 and 11 features. These encouraging in vitro results suggest that the microDMx technology, coupled with bioinformatics data analysis, has potential for diagnosis of bacterial infections.
authors.affiliation: Mechanical and Instruments Division, Bioengineering Group, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, 555 Technology Square MS37, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Marianna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shnayderman
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mansfield
authors.forename: Ping
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Yip
authors.forename: Heather A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.forename: Melissa D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Krebs
authors.forename: Sarah J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: Julie E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Zeskind
authors.forename: Edward T
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Ryan
authors.forename: Henry L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Dorkin
authors.forename: Michael V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Callahan
authors.forename: Thomas O
authors.initials: TO
authors.lastname: Stair
authors.forename: Jeffrey A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Gelfand
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Gill
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hitt
authors.forename: Cristina E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Davis
mesh_terms: D001407:Bacillus / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D002849:Chromatography, Gas; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*; D020102:Mycobacterium smegmatis / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity