In silico molecular typing methods for Staphylococcus aureus

Currently, many different methods have been developed for subspecies typing of Staphylococcus aureus. However, there is no “ideal” one because of its disadvantages and thus there is no commonly accepted guidelines for the selection of the optimal typing method for epidemiological investigations. The aim of the study was an in silico comparison of widely used typing methods, including Multilocus sequence typing (MLST), Staphylococcus aureus Protein A (spa) typing, Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), Multiple Locus Variable-number Tandem Repeat Analysis (MLVA) and whole genome multilocus sequence typing (wgMLST), in terms of discriminatory power and coefficients congruence. Quantitative assessment of discriminatory power and correlation of five typing methods: wgMLST, PFGE, MLST, MLVA and spa typing was performed, by targeting the different sites of the Staphylococcus aureus genome (which had evolved at different rates).

This is the basis of a new article of interest. The reference is:

Babenko, A., Turmuhambetova, A., Sandle, T. and Chesca, A. (2016) In silico comparison of molecular typing methods for characterization of Staphylococcus aureus, Acta Medica Mediterranea, 32: 1021-1027

The article can be accessed here.

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Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle