Diffuse reflectance absorbance spectroscopy taking in chemometrics (DRASTIC), A hyperspectral FT-IR-based approach to rapid screening for metabolite overproduction

We introduce diffuse-reflectance absorbance spectroscopy in the mid-infrared as a novel method of chemical imaging for the rapid screening of biological samples for metabolite overproduction, using mixtures of ampicillin with Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus as model systems. Deconvolution of the hyperspectral information provided by the raw diffuse reflectance-absorbance mid-infrared spectra was achieved using a combination of principal components analysis (PCA), artificial neural networks (ANNs) and partial least squares regression (PLS). Whereas a univariate approach necessitates appropriate data selection to remove any interferences, the chemometrics/hyperspectral approach could be employed to permit filtering of undesired components to give accurate quantification by PLS and ANNs without any preprocessing. The use of PCs as inputs to the ANNs decreased the training time from some 12 h to ca. 5 min. Equivalent concentrations of ampicillin between 0.05 and 20 mM in an E. coli or S. aureus background were quantified with >95% accuracy using this approach.