title: Molecular typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis by using nine novel variable-number tandem repeats across the Beijing family and low-copy-number IS6110 isolates.
abstract: Molecular epidemiological tools for genotyping clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis have been developed and used to help track and contain transmission of tuberculosis. We identified 87 short sequence repeat loci within the genome of the M. tuberculosis H37Rv strain. Nine tandem repeats were found to be variable (variable-number tandem repeats [VNTRs]) in a set of 91 isolates. Fifty-seven of the isolates had only four IS6110 bands. The other 34 isolates were members of the Beijing strain family. The number of alleles of each these nine VNTRs was determined by examining each isolate. Six of the loci (Mtb-v1, -v4, -v10, -v15, -v18, and -v20) were able to differentiate the Beijing spoligotype identical isolates into seven distinct genotypes. Five of the loci (Mtb-v3, -v5, -v6, -v10, and -v15) were informative in discriminating the four-band IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism isolates from each other. The Nei's diversity values of each marker ranged from 0.02 to 0.59, with the number of alleles ranging from two to eight across the entire strain set. These nine loci provide a useful, discriminatory extension of VNTR typing methods for application to molecular epidemiologic studies of M. tuberculosis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011-5640, USA.
authors.forename: R Scott
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Spurgiesz
authors.forename: Teresa N
authors.initials: TN
authors.lastname: Quitugua
authors.forename: Kimothy L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schupp
authors.forename: Eldon G
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Palmer
authors.forename: Rebecca A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Cox
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Keim
mesh_terms: D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D018628:Gene Dosage; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements