Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C4gQIISLcq2/ A new method for rapidly identifying bacteria, fungi, and other microbes is here thanks to a database that catalogues the molecules characteristically produced by these germs, that is their chemical fingerprints.  This tool, named microbeMASST, with MASST standing for mass spectroscopy search tool, has been developed by UC-San Diego pharmacologists. Here’s how it works. Biological samples are fed into a mass spectrometer that can identify the individual molecules.  The list of these substances is then fed into microbeMASST, and the program spits out the names of those microbes that produce such chemicals.  All this in a fraction of the time it might typical take to identify pathologic agents, particularly slow growing ones such as the tuberculosis bacterium. The database now covers in excess of 60,000 microbes and that number will surely grow.  In addition to microbe identification, the database can better help us understand the metabolism of these pathog