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Updated: Oct 3, 2026

Identification of Fatty Acids in Bacillus cereus
Published on: December 5, 2016
Identification of bacteria from single colonies by fatty acid analysis
1US Department of Agriculture, ARS, SASL, Building 001 Room 140 BARC-West, Beltsville, MD 20705-2350, USA. buyerj@ba.ars.usda.gov
Abstract:
While a commercially available system for microbial identification by fatty acid analysis (Microbial Identification System, MIDI, Newark, DE, USA) is available, it requires approximately 40-mg wet weight of biomass. Various authors have published methods for fatty acid analysis of single colonies, but no database of organisms has been developed for those methods. A modification of the MIDI system to increase sensitivity while maintaining relative retention times and peak areas allows the standard peak naming tables and libraries of organisms to be used with single colonies. Samples are evaporated down before injection to concentrate the fatty acids, while splitless injection is used to allow more sample to enter the gas chromatograph. Several known bacteria were correctly identified by this method.
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