Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 23, 2026

Identification of Rare Bacterial Pathogens by 16S rRNA Gene Sequencing and MALDI-TOF MS
Published on: July 11, 2016
Identification and differentiation of avian Mycoplasma species using MALDI-TOF MS
Liane Baudler1,2, Sandra Scheufen1,2, Luisa Ziegler1,2
1Clinic for Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians and Fish (Baudler, Ziegler, Möller Palau-Ribes, Lierz), Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
Abstract:
The identification of avian Mycoplasma spp. by conventional immunologic, phenotypic, and molecular methods can be demanding and time-consuming. We evaluated MALDI-TOF MS for its suitability to identify avian mycoplasmas at the species level. We generated a mycoplasma spectral database of 36 main spectrum profiles (MSPs) representing 23 avian Mycoplasma spp. using 23 type and reference strains, 1 live vaccine strain, and 8 clinical isolates. We then used 112 avian Mycoplasma clinical isolates of different avian mycoplasmas, 4 Mycoplasma live vaccine strains, and 1 Mycoplasma type strain, previously cultured and identified to the species level by molecular methods, to evaluate the MSP database. Protein extraction and MALDI-TOF MS analysis were performed with a maximum of 3 repetitions per isolate. MALDI-TOF MS resulted in accurate species-level identification with a score of ≥2.0 for 112 of 117 (96%) isolates. The MALDI-TOF MS analysis of 4 of 5 isolates that did not yield a score of ≥2.0 resulted in best-match identifications that were still concordant at species level with the molecular method used for previous identification. Therefore, MALDI-TOF MS is a promising tool for reliable identification of avian Mycoplasma spp.
More Related Videos
13:29Rapid Identification of Gram Negative Bacteria from Blood Culture Broth Using MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry
Published on: May 28, 2014
09:26Identification of Antibacterial Immunity Proteins in Escherichia coli using MALDI-TOF-TOF-MS/MS and Top-Down Proteomic Analysis
Published on: May 23, 2021
Related Concept Videos
MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry
What is a Species?
Keystone Species
Formation of Species
Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization (MALDI)
Multi-species Conserved Sequences
Although the genome of each species varies greatly from each other, a few sequences are highly conserved. Such conserved...