title: Genotyping of Salmonella with lineage-specific genes: correlation with serotyping.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The bacterial genus Salmonella encompasses a large number of serotypes that are genetically very similar but biologically quite different, especially in pathogenic properties and host specificity. Serotyping has been used for the classification, identification, and epidemiological investigation due to its excellent discriminating power, but it cannot distinguish the different pathogenic lineages within a polyphyletic serotype. Additionally, very few institutions have the comprehensive set of antisera for typing. Therefore various studies have been performed to explore alternative assays to differentiate Salmonella isolates, such as the search for genes that can be used as potential molecular substitutes for serotyping. However, the genes tested so far have often given inconsistent results.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this study, the discriminating power of seven genes to differentiate 309 Salmonella strains representing 26 serotypes was evaluated and the results were compared with those of other methods.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The seven newly selected genes have a good power to differentiate different serovars. The tree based on the concatenated sequences of these genes revealed phylogenetic relationships of the bacteria consistent with that of the whole genome tree.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Individual Salmonella lineages each have specific genes that can be used to differentiate Salmonella isolates on a phylogenetic basis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Qing-Hua
authors.initials: QH
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.affiliation: Institute of Immunology, Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Ren-Qing
authors.initials: RQ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Genomics Research Center, Harbin Medical University, 157 Baojian Road, Harbin, 150081, China; HMU-UCFM Centre for Infection and Genomics, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China.
authors.forename: Gui-Rong
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Genomics Research Center, Harbin Medical University, 157 Baojian Road, Harbin, 150081, China; HMU-UCFM Centre for Infection and Genomics, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China; Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Electronic address: slliu@ucalgary.ca.
authors.forename: Shu-Lin
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D010802:Phylogeny; D012475:Salmonella / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D012703:Serotyping
keywords: MLST; Salmonella; Serotype-specific gene; Serotyping; rpoB