Center Of Excellence

Identification of bacteria and fungi by traditional methods can be a time consuming and complex task. Workup of bacteria and yeasts may include assessing colony and gram stain morphology followed by phenotypic and biochemical testing. For fungi, organisms are often distinguished by their characteristic microscopic and macroscopic morphology. In the case of the mycobacteria, DNA probes or other molecular methods are used to identify members of the M. tuberculosis complex, but identification of the non-tuberculous mycobacteria requires the assessment of phenotypic traits, including colony morphology and growth rate. These traditional methods can prolong the time to diagnosis, since the preparation of one or more subcultures is often necessary for a species level identification. Further, the interpretation of phenotypic characteristics is often subjective, requiring significant experience and training for accurate identification. When these traditional methods are unable to identify an organism, sequencing may be performed, but this often results in long turnaround times and adds significant expense.