title: Pan-genome analysis provides much higher strain typing resolution than multi-locus sequence typing.
abstract: The most widely used DNA-based method for bacterial strain typing, multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), lacks sufficient resolution to distinguish among many bacterial strains within a species. Here, we show that strain typing based on the presence or absence of distributed genes is able to resolve all completely sequenced genomes of six bacterial species. This was accomplished by the development of a clustering method, neighbour grouping, which is completely consistent with the lower-resolution MLST method, but provides far greater resolving power. Because the presence/absence of distributed genes can be determined by low-cost microarray analyses, it offers a practical, high-resolution alternative to MLST that could provide valuable diagnostic and prognostic information for pathogenic bacterial species.
authors.affiliation: Center for Genomic Sciences, Allegheny-Singer Research Institute, 320 East North Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212, USA.|Bellingham Research Institute, 218 Chuckanut Point Rd, Bellingham, WA 98229, USA.
authors.forename: Barry G
authors.initials: BG
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.affiliation: Departments of Microbiology and Immunology, and Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Drexel University College of Medicine, Allegheny Campus, 320 East North Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212, USA.|Center for Genomic Sciences, Allegheny-Singer Research Institute, 320 East North Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212, USA.
authors.forename: Garth D
authors.initials: GD
authors.lastname: Ehrlich
authors.affiliation: Departments of Microbiology and Immunology, and Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Drexel University College of Medicine, Allegheny Campus, 320 East North Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212, USA.|Center for Genomic Sciences, Allegheny-Singer Research Institute, 320 East North Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212, USA.
authors.forename: Fen Z
authors.initials: FZ
authors.lastname: Hu
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*