CELL IDENTIFICATION DEVICE AND PROGRAM

• US 20190323054A1
• Filed: 06/28/2019
• Published: 10/24/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Shimadzu Corporation
• Original Assignee: Shimadzu Corporation
• Inventors: OJIMA, Noriyuki, OGATA, Koretsugu, SHIMA, Keisuke, TAMURA, Hiroto, HOSODA, Akifumi, HOTTA, Yudai
• Granted Patent: US 10,550,418 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: C12Q 1/04 Determining presence or kind of microorganism; Use of selective media for testing antibiotics or bacteriocides; Compositions containing a chemical indicator therefor C12Q1/6897 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 15/10 Investigating individual particles
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2015/1006 for cytology
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 33/48735 Investigating suspensions of cells, e.g. measuring microbe concentration by chemical means C12Q1/04; colony counters C12M1/34; concentration of particle suspensions in general G01N15/06
• CPC Class Codes: G16C 20/20 Identification of molecular entities, parts thereof or of chemical compositions
• CPC Class Codes: H01J 49/025 Detectors specially adapted to particle spectrometers data acquisition H01J49/0036; detectors per se G01T, e.g. G01T1/28, G01T1/29

Abstract

An apparatus that identifies the type of a test cell based on a result obtained by performing mass spectrometry on the test cell includes a higher-level database, which contains mass lists that each list ion mass values of constituent components of a known cell, and a lower-level database, which contains partial mass lists that each list only strain-specific ion mass values out of the ion mass values. The higher-level database is first searched for a test mass list which is created from the result of the mass spectrometry performed on the test cell, and based on a result of the search, an organism species to be searched in the following search operation is determined. Mass values common to the organism species are subsequently deleted from the mass list for the test cell, and the mass list having undergone the deletion operation is used to search the lower-level database.

Claims

1. An apparatus that includes a storage section and a computation section and identifies a type of a test cell based on a result obtained by performing mass spectrometry on the test cell, the apparatus characterized in that

the storage section stores a database containing mass lists for a plurality of known cells, each of the mass lists listing ion mass values or molecular weights of constituent components of the known cell,

the computation section includes

a) first search means for searching the database for a test mass list which is created based from a result of the mass spectrometry and which lists ion mass values or molecular weights of constituent components of the test cell,

b) classification group determination means for determining, based on a result of the search performed by the first search means, a classification group to be searched in the following search operation,

c) test partial mass list creation means for creating a test partial mass list from the test mass list by deleting ion mass values or molecular weights common to the classification group determined by the classification group determination means, and

d) second search means for searching, among the mass lists contained in the database, mass lists for known cells which belong to the classification group determined by the classification group determination means for the test partial mass list,

wherein the second search means deletes, from the mass lists to be searched, ion mass values or molecular weights common to the classification group determined by the classification group determination means and searches the mass lists having undergone the deletion operation for the test partial mass list.

2. The cell identification apparatus according to claim 1, characterized in that

the storage section further comprises a variation database containing information on variations that may occur in a base sequence or an amino acid sequence, and

the second search means obtains information on the variations from the variation database, changes, based on the information, the ion mass values or molecular weights contained in the mass lists having undergone the deletion operation to ion mass values or molecular weights after the variations occur, and searches the changed mass lists for the test partial mass lists.

3. A non-transitory computer readable medium recording a program that makes a computer function as the first search means, the classification group determination means, the test partial mass list creation means, and the second search means according to claim 1.