Abstract
Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) has attracted a great deal of attention in the field of chemotaxonomy as a potential tool for rapid and convenient bacterial differentiation. It has been demonstrated that several bacteria including pathogens can be discriminated and/or identified at the genus, species, and even strain level based on fingerprinting the protein or lipid patterns of the resulting mass spectra. In this review, firstly, the instrumental and methodological aspects of MALDI-MS for bacterial analysis are briefly discussed. Then, some typical applications of MALDI-MS to the discriminative analysis of various pathogenic bacteria will be discussed in detail.
