Performance of VITEK mass spectrometry V3.0 for rapid identification of clinical Aspergillus fumigatus in different culture conditions based on ribosomal proteins Longrong Zhou,Yongquan Chen, Yuanhong Xu Department of Clinical Laboratory, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Anhui, Hefei, People’s Republic of China Abstract: Fast and accurate discrimination of Aspergillus fumigatus is significant, since misidentification may lead to inappropriate clinical therapy. This study assessed VITEK mass spectrometry (MS) V3.0 for A. fumigatus identification using extracted fungal ribosomal proteins. A total of 52 isolates preliminarily identified as A. fumigatus by traditional morphological methods were inoculated in three different culture media and cultured at two different temperatures. The specific spectral fingerprints of different culture time points (48, 72, 96, and 120 h) were obtained. Of all strains, 88.5% (46/52) were discriminated as A. fumigatus, while the remaining 11.5% (6/52) produced results inconsistent with morphological analysis. Molecular sequencing, as a reference method for species identification, was used to validate the morphological analysis and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight MS. Chi-square tests (Χ2 test, P