title: Bacterial strain typing in the genomic era.
abstract: Bacterial strain typing, or identifying bacteria at the strain level, is particularly important for diagnosis, treatment, and epidemiological surveillance of bacterial infections. This is especially the case for bacteria exhibiting high levels of antibiotic resistance or virulence, and those involved in nosocomial or pandemic infections. Strain typing also has applications in studying bacterial population dynamics. Over the last two decades, molecular methods have progressively replaced phenotypic assays to type bacterial strains. In this article, we review the current bacterial genotyping methods and classify them into three main categories: (1) DNA banding pattern-based methods, which classify bacteria according to the size of fragments generated by amplification and/or enzymatic digestion of genomic DNA, (2) DNA sequencing-based methods, which study the polymorphism of DNA sequences, and (3) DNA hybridization-based methods using nucleotidic probes. We described and compared the applications of genotyping methods to the study of bacterial strain diversity. We also discussed the selection of appropriate genotyping methods and the challenges of bacterial strain typing, described the current trends of genotyping methods, and investigated the progresses allowed by the availability of genomic sequences.
authors.affiliation: Unité des Rickettsies et pathogènes émergents, CNRS UMR 6236, IRD 198, Faculté de médecine, Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France.
authors.forename: Wenjun
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Didier
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Raoult
authors.forename: Pierre-Edouard
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Fournier
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D001424:Bacterial Infections / Q000382:microbiology*; D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques; D015342:DNA Probes; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000032:analysis / Q000235:genetics; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D015183:Restriction Mapping; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D015342:DNA Probes; D004269:DNA, Bacterial