FAME-GC-Analysis for Quantification of Mixed Microbial Populations

Project: Research area

Project Details

Description

The determination of fatty acids from whole bacterial cells is widely used in clinical and environmental microbiology for identification of bacterial species because of the characteristic abundance and amount of different fatty acids in different bacterial species. In addition, the fatty acid patterns depend on cultivation conditions and age of the cultures. Commercial systemes for microbial identification use standard methods for cultivation, preparation of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) and gas chromatographic analysis. The chromatographic data are compared with FAME-profiles in databases. In this investigation we use this principle for quantitative determination of species biomasses in defined mixed bacterial populations. Since there is no general method available for determination of species ratio in mixed population except the colony forming unit (CFU), this method would allow us to monitor species composition in biotechnological mixed population fermentations and to obtain results within several hours. Unknown mass ratios of several species in a species mixture (mixed microbial population) can be calculated from the FAME patterns by multivariate regression analysis between FAME data of pure cultures and mixed cultures.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date1/01/9631/01/00

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