| abstract |
The present invention provides an instrument and methods for a multispectral optical technique that can simultaneously classify individual biological cells within mixed populations. This invention, known as Multispectral Taxonomic Identification (MTID), shows that microscopy can be combined with a software analysis program to measure and categorize the fluorescence and other spectroscopically identifiable signals from complex populations of cells in situ, without cultivation. The invention thus enables high-throughput screening of cells for taxonomic classification. |