title: Assessment of molecular typing methods to determine invasiveness and to differentiate clones of Streptococcus pneumoniae.
abstract: In the United States, Streptococcus pneumoniae is the leading cause of community-acquired pneumonia and invasive bacterial disease. As antimicrobial resistance increases, it will become critical to determine if strains circulating in a population are likely to cause invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). This is possible by comparison of an isolate's genotype to strains known to be invasive. In this work, we compared pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST), comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and multi-invasive-locus sequence typing (MILST) for their ability to distinguish between known IPD causing and carrier strains using phylogenetic analyses. In addition, we assess the ability of these techniques to determine true clones from highly related strains. The resulting trees suggest that despite similar overall topologies, the clearest picture of invasiveness and genetic relatedness can be viewed when typing methods are used collectively.
authors.affiliation: Hartwell Center for Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, 332 North Lauderdale, Memphis, TN 38105, United States. caroline.obert@stjude.org
authors.forename: Caroline A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Obert
authors.forename: Geli
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Jack
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sublett
authors.forename: Elaine I
authors.initials: EI
authors.lastname: Tuomanen
authors.forename: Carlos J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Orihuela
mesh_terms: D002353:Carrier State; D015331:Cohort Studies; D016521:Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D006801:Humans; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology; D009693:Nucleic Acid Hybridization; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D010802:Phylogeny; D013290:Streptococcal Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000382:microbiology*; D013296:Streptococcus pneumoniae / Q000145:classification* / Q000187:drug effects / Q000235:genetics / Q000472:pathogenicity / Q000502:physiology