title: Molecular typing methods for Clostridium difficile: pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and PCR ribotyping.
abstract: Molecular typing methods for Clostridium difficile are based on gel electrophoresis of restriction fragments (endonuclease restriction analysis, REA; pulsed field gel electrophoresis PFGE; toxinotyping), PCR amplification (PCR ribotyping, arbitrarily primed PCR, multilocus variable-number tandem-repeat analysis MLVA), and sequence analysis (multilocus sequence typing MLST; slpA typing, tandem repeat sequence typing). We will describe two standard methods (PCR ribotyping predominantly used throughout Europe and PFGE which is predominantly used in North America) and will discuss the difficulties of inter-laboratory comparability and unification of typing nomenclature.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Public Health Maribor, Centre for Microbiology, Maribor, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Janezic
authors.forename: Maja
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rupnik
mesh_terms: D015373:Bacterial Typing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D016360:Clostridioides difficile / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D016521:Electrophoresis, Gel, Pulsed-Field / Q000379:methods*; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods*; D021521:Ribotyping / Q000379:methods*