Taxonomic Discrimination of Cyanobacteria by Metabolic Fingerprinting Using Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectra and Multivariate Statistical Analysis

When whole-cell extracts are analyzed, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR) spectroscopy provides biochemical profiles that contain overlapping signals of the majority of the compounds. To determine whether cyanobacteria could be taxonomically discriminated on the basis of metabolic fingerprinting, we subjected whole-cell extracts of the cyanobacteria to ¹H NMR. The ¹H NMR spectra revealed a predominance of signals in the aliphatic region. Principal component analysis (PCA) of the data then enabled discrimination of the cyanobacteria.