Weighted pattern-matching.

Weighted pattern-matching contributes to an increased accuracy of automated bacterial identification. For example, in the case of pears infected with E. amylovora (German strain Ea1/79), initial pattern matching analysis could not differentiate between different E. amylovora subspecies. Visual inspection of specific mass signals listed in Table 1 helped to unambiguously identify the correct sub-species. Software-supported weighted pattern matching leads to an accurate analysis of the correct subspecies, for example, the E. amylovora (type strain CFBP1232) was identified unambiguously. More information on the weighted pattern matching analysis is depicted in Figure 5 and in Table 3.