Other methods of identification

If an organism can be grown under the similar conditions as many other reference strains other techniques of identification are also available to the microbiologist. The lipids of a pure culture can be esterified, extracted and then quantified through GC which is known as gas chromatography. This FAMEs technique then requires the GC trace to be compared through computer against other organisms grown in exactly the similar way on the similar medium. This is an inexpensive and rapid procedure but interpretation can be hard and is unsuitable for micro- organisms which grow under unusual conditions. The FAME profile of any organism alters depending on the medium used for growth. An adaptation of this technique is phospholipid linked fatty acid analysis PLFA that is a more sensitive technique and specific.

As DNA sequencing becomes cheaper and easier, it has also become standard practice to complement the results from physiological and biochemical tests with the results of 16S rRNA gene sequencing. While this practice blurs the distinction among phylogeny and identification further the results can be obtained easily and quickly but may be misleading if only the sequencing data are considered.