Advances in Chemical and Biological Methods to Identify Microorganisms-From Past to Present

Fast detection and identification of microorganisms is a challenging and significant feature from industry to medicine. Standard approaches are known to be very time-consuming and labor-intensive (e.g., culture media and biochemical tests). Conversely, screening techniques demand a quick and low-cost grouping of bacterial/fungal isolates and current analysis call for broad reports of microorganisms, involving the application of molecular techniques (e.g., 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing based on polymerase chain reaction). The goal of this review is to present the past and the present methods of detection and identification of microorganisms, and to discuss their advantages and their limitations.

Recent advances in bioanalytical sample preparation for LC-MS analysis

Sample preparation has historically been, and continues to be, the most challenging part of the bioanalytical workflow. Several techniques have been developed over the years to deal with the problems of recovery and matrix effects in an effort to increase the reliability and robustness of the bioanalytical method. In recent years certain techniques have come into prominence and gained acceptance in routine sample preparation, and some have shown promise in their use in a discovery environment where speed is critical and method development time is often limited. The aim of this review is to examine several of these techniques and provide examples of their use from the literature, as well as comment on their utility in current workflows.

Fast chromatography in the regulated bioanalytical environment: sub-2-µm versus fused-core particles

Increased throughput and rapid data turnaround have necessitated the need for faster LC separations in the regulated bioanalytical environment; sub-2-μm and fused-core chromatography are two viable approaches to accomplish this. Sub-2-μm columns offer high efficiency and resolution separations at the cost of high system backpressure and are best suited for preclinical sample analysis, whereas fused-core columns offer slightly lower efficiency and resolution, but are more tolerant to dirty extracts (such as those seen in clinical samples) that may clog the inlet filter. For clinical sample analyses, sub-2-μm columns should be restricted to sample extracts obtained via LLE or SLE, whereas fused-core columns can be used with sample preparations techniques ranging from protein precipitation to SLE.