Software Solutions for Indication and Identification of Pathogenic Microoranisms Using Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

The effectiveness of differentiation of bacterial pathogens using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry depends on the quality of sample preparation, compliance with mass spectrometric analysis parameters and statistical approaches used, implemented by various modern software tools. The review provides a brief description of the most known software used in the processing and bioinformation analysis of time-of-flight mass spectrometry data. A list of computer platforms, programs and environments, both commercial and publicly available, is presented. The results of indication and identification of pathogens of particularly dangerous and natural-focal infections by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry using publicly available software – programming language R, Mass-Up, MicrobeMS, licensed – MatLab, ClinProTools, as well as free web applications, including, Speclust, Ribopeaksare provided. The data on usage of such well-known platforms as MALDI BioTyper, SARAMIS Vitek-MS and Andromas (Andromas SAS, France) for inter- and intra-specific differentiation of closely related species are presented. Results of identification and differentiation of microorganisms applying MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry based on detection of specific proteins for cross-comparison – biomarkers – are given. The analysis shows that the programming language R environment is one of the publicly available universal platforms with an optimal combination of algorithms for processing and interpreting of a large array of mass spectrometric data.