FT-IR microspectroscopy combines FT-IR spectroscopy with microscopy and is a relatively novel technique for the identification of microorganisms by comparison to reference spectra in a database. The novelty of the technique is displayed by the measurement of microcolonies that have to be transferred from the agar plate to an IR-transparent sample carrier. As for the formation of microcolonies a reduced incubation time is sufficient, an accelerated identification compared to conventional cultivation-dependent methods is possible. Moreover, the hitherto required isolation of microorganisms prior to the identification may be omitted, which enables rapid quantitative analysis of mixed microbial consortia. The aim of the presented work was to apply FT-IR microspectroscopy to the identification of food-relevant microorganisms. For this purpose, the method was first standardised with respect to the incubation of the microorganisms and the influence of certain parameters on the quality of the spectra. Afterwards, reference databases for yeasts, coryneform bacteria and lactic acid bacteria were established including 82, 64, and 71 strains, respectively, and the spectral ranges important for the identification and the suitable derivation were determined. After optimising the parameters for data analysis an external validation of the databases resulted in 80% correct identification on the species level for yeasts, 75% for coryneform bacteria, and 83% for lactic acid bacteria. For the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Debaryomyces hansenii, 92% and 91% of the spectra, respectively, were typed correctly on the strain level. These are very good results compared to conventional techniques for routine identification of microorganisms, particularly as differentiation to the strain level with commercially available identification kits will normally not be achieved. However, the results also show that there is still potential for improvement. The success of identification might be improved by including more spectra in the database or by applying highly sophisticated multivariate statistical techniques of data analysis, for example artificial neural networks. The databases for coryneform bacteria and lactic acid bacteria were also applied to the population analyses of two red smear cheese ripening consortia and one undefined starter culture for Emmentaler cheese. Altogether, 3750 spectra were recorded. The identification results obtained by FT-IR microspectroscopy were verified by identifying isolates by FT-IR macrospectroscopy and partially by 16S rDNA sequencing, which showed that species well covered by the spectral library could be identified unequivocally. The starter culture for the Emmentaler cheese was included in the database for lactic acid bacteria prior to the population analysis, which enabled the differentiation of the organisms present in the cheese into starter culture and house flora as well as into different strains. Furthermore, a shift in the flora composition during the acidification could be observed. The presented work shows that FT-IR microspectroscopy can be applied successfully to the identification of food-relevant microorganisms. Due to the higher work effort for the measurement of pure cultures by FT-IR microspectroscopy, the universal identification of microorganisms as it is performed successfully applying FT-IR macrospectroscopy seems not to be the optimal application for this technique. The highest potential of the method lies in the high degree of automation for the measurement of many colonies of the same sample, which significantly accelerates microbial population analyses. The large amount of data, furthermore, permits very precise results to be obtained. This renders, for the first time, a monitoring of ripening consortia as well as contamination route analyses without applying molecular techniques and with reasonable work effort possible for routine analyses.
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FT-IR microspectroscopy combines FT-IR spectroscopy with microscopy and is a relatively novel technique for the identification of microorganisms by comparison to reference spectra in a database. The novelty of the technique is displayed by the measurement of microcolonies that have to be transferred from the agar plate to an IR-transparent sample carrier. As for the formation of microcolonies a reduced incubation time is sufficient, an accelerated identification compared to conventional cultivat...
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