MALDI-TOF MS Profiling-Advances in Species Identification of Pests, Parasites, and Vectors

Abstract

Invertebrate pests and parasites of humans, animals, and plants continue to cause serious diseases and remain as a high treat to agricultural productivity and storage. The rapid and accurate species identification of the pests and parasites are needed for understanding epidemiology, monitoring outbreaks, and designing control measures. Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) profiling has emerged as a rapid, cost effective, and high throughput technique of microbial species identification in modern diagnostic laboratories. The development of soft ionization techniques and the release of commercial pattern matching software platforms has resulted in the exponential growth of applications in higher organisms including parasitology. The present review discusses the proof-of-principle experiments and various methods of MALDI MS profiling in rapid species identification of both laboratory and field isolates of pests, parasites and vectors.

Use of MALDI-TOF MS for the Identification of Chad Mosquitoes and the Origin of Their Blood Meal

“…35 Matrix-assisted desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry has revolutionized clinical microbiology by its use in the systematic identification of bacteria, 15,16,36 archaea, 17 parasites, and fungi. 18 Recently, it has been introduced in medical entomology as a tool for the rapid and accurate identification of arthropods, detection of the origin of their blood meal, and detection of associated microorganisms. 23,24,26,[37][38][39][40][41] In entomology, adjustments such as arthropod-based body selection and sample crushing protocol are required for proper MALDI-TOF MS identification of arthropods or detection of associated pathogens.…”

“…13,14 Matrix-assisted desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is a clinical microbiology tool used for the systematic identification of bacteria, 15,16 archaea, 17 fungus, and parasites. 18 Recently, MALDI-TOF MS has been presented as an alternative tool for the rapid identification of many arthropods including mosquitoes [19][20][21][22] and the origin of their blood meal. 23,24 This involved different entomological studies using fresh samples from the laboratory and samples collected from the fields which were either frozen, preserved, preserved in alcohol, or crushed on Whatman paper.…”

Concurrent Proteomic Fingerprinting and Molecular Analysis of Cyathostomins

“…A promising method for species‐identification is proteomic fingerprinting using MALDI‐TOF MS . It is routinely used for bacteria and has also been applied to ectoparasites such as insects and ticks . The few reports previously published on the application of MALDI‐TOF MS to parasitic nematodes used well established single species nematode isolates to obtain master spectra libraries .…”

Identification to species level of live single microalgal cells from plankton samples with matrix-free laser/desorption ionization mass spectrometry

“…Matrix-assisted laser desorption-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) allows the identification of microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, and algae, based on mass spectra of protein extracts from groups of cells (Barbano et al 2015;Crossay et al 2017;Mello et al 2017;Murugaiyan and Roesler 2017). MALDI-TOF mass spectra analysis is established for the automated identification of bacteria by spectral pattern matching (SPM) and clustering algorithms, even when consortia of organisms were analyzed (Sandrin and Demirev 2018;Yang et al 2018).…”