Author(s)

Yizhen Fu, Feng Liu, Yalu Ye

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Matrix-assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization with Time-of-flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOFMS) was investigated as a method for the rapid identifica-tion of species. Current demand in microbial identi-fication is how to compare unknown strains to the known one quickly, semi-automatically and accurately. In this paper, we present a software tool that allows flexibly microbial matching in a user-friendly way, by letting the users to customize comparison parameters including: in vitro transcription enzyme, mass tolerance,minimum fragment length, intensity threshold and corresponding weights. We provide three spectral scoring functions to compute the affin-ity between the species. Therefore, the precision of microbial comparison increases. To test and verify this tool, we employed experimental spectral data based on MALDI-TOFMS and the gene sequences of E.coli and Salmonella. This software is written in Java for cross-platform intention.

microbial Comparison; Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization with Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

Fu, Y. , Liu, F. and Ye, Y. (2011) MicrobMatcher: a microbial comparison software based on matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization with time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Journal of Biomedical Science and Engineering, 4, 403-409. doi: 10.4236/jbise.2011.45051.