Abstract
Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy has shown remarkable ability in distinguishing between bacterial species and identifying bacterial colony structures, when used in tandem with methods such as cluster analysis, principal component analysis, or linear discriminant analysis. The present work was aimed to evaluate the potential of FTIRβmicroscopy (FTIRβMSP) to distinguish between different serotypes and capsular quantities of Streptococcus pneumoniae. In general, the results obtained have consistently proven that the spectral information at the region 900β1185 cm^β1^ was sufficient to distinguish between various pneumococcal serotypes. Moreover, the method was able to differentiate between S. pneumoniae phase variants on the basis of their relative carbohydrate content. The unsupervised cluster analysis of the samples showed differences, not only in the carbohydrate content, but also in the region 1350β1480 cm^β1^, which is dominated by absorptions due to lipids and phospholipids. This approach proved to be useful for the distinction between S. pneumoniae serotypes and between phase variants, which were shown to acquire different pathogenic capacity. Β© 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 83:434β442, 2006
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