Identification of yeast species by fatty acid profiling as measured by gas-liquid chromatography

An improved rapid method for the identification of yeasts and yeast-like fu ngi from clinical sources which is based on fatty acid profiles obtained by gas-liquid chromatography (GLC) is described. The fatty acid profile datab ase is based upon internal standardisation and using the relative retention times and the retention index of the analysed fatty acids. Differentiation between yeast species was achieved by the quantitative and qualitative com parison of measured fatty acid profiles with those in the database. A total of 1024 clinical isolates were analysed by GLC to test the validity of the database. 96.2% of all tested samples were identified correctly to the spe cies level by the improved GLC method. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science BN. All ri ghts reserved.