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Updated: Jan 10, 2026
Identification of Rare Bacterial Pathogens by 16S rRNA Gene Sequencing and MALDI-TOF MS
Published on: July 11, 2016
Evaluation of MALDI-TOF systems (autof MS 1000) in identification of pharmaceutical environmental bacteria
Yunting Ma1, Bin Yang1, Chenshui Lin2
1Key Laboratory of Microbiol Technology and Bioinformatics of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou 310012, China; Zhejiang Institute of Microbiology, Hangzhou 310012, China; Zhejiang Tianke High Technology Development Co., Ltd., Hangzhou 310012, China.
Abstract:
This study evaluated the performance of the Autof MS 1000 matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry system in identifying pharmaceutical environmental bacteria, with 16S rDNA sequencing as the gold standard. A total of 1041 non-repetitive isolates collected from various pharmaceutical environments from May 2022 to July 2022 were analyzed. The Autof MS 1000 system successfully identified 806 (77.42 %) of the 1041 isolates. The unsuccessful identifications were attributable to either 'not reliable' scores below 6.0 (n = 229, 22.00 %) or a complete failure to obtain a mass spectrum (n = 6, 0.58 %). Using 16S rDNA sequencing as the reference standard, the Autof MS 1000 demonstrated a species-level identification accuracy of 73.10 % (587/803) and a genus-level accuracy of 91.53 % (735/803). The Autof MS 1000 shows considerable potential for the high-throughput identification of pharmaceutical environmental bacteria. Future efforts to expand the mass spectrometry database and optimize pretreatment protocols are needed to further enhance its identification accuracy.
