High-performance liquid chromatographic analysis of bacterial fatty acid composition for chemotaxonomic characterization of oral streptococci.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method was developed to analyze the fatty acid composition of bacterial lipids. After saponification of lipids extracted from bacteria, the liberated fatty acids were labeled with a fluorescence reagent, 4-bromomethyl-7-acetoxycoumarin, followed by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic separation and fluorescence detection. All bacterial fatty acids were simultaneously separated within 30 min and sensitively determined. This method was applied to the chemotaxonomic characterization of oral streptococci. The fatty acid composition of phospholipids and total lipids distinguished Streptococcus mutans from any other species examined and showed that Streptococcus sanguis had a close taxonomic relationship with Streptococcus salivarius.