The ability to identify microorganisms quickly and accurately is an important tool for all diagnosticians working with human, animal, and plant pathogens.
Microbial identification is also an important component of many research projects.
Identification of bacteria is particularly difficult because bacteria have few distinctive morphological characteristics. Therefore, an array of physiological tests, utilizing dozens of growth media is often required. The Sherlock system uses 143 fatty acids for bacterial identification. Most of these fatty acid identifications have been confirmed by mass spectroscopy. The most basic definition for fatty acids is a class of compounds containing a long hydrocarbon chain with a terminal carboxylate group.