Applications of flow cytometry to mycoplasmology.

Flow cytometry has become a valuable tool in different fields of microbiology, such as clinical microbiology, aquatic and environmental microbiology, food microbiology, and biotechnology. It combines direct and rapid assays to determine numbers, biochemical and physiological characteristics of individual cells, revealing the heterogeneity present in a population. This review focuses on the applications of flow cytometry to the field of mycoplasmology. It tries to give a scope of the important breakthroughs which occurred in this field in the last decades, and in the advantages of introducing flow cytometry in research and routine diagnostic procedures of mycoplasmas.