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Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) indexes the sequence variation present in a small number (usually seven) of housekeeping gene fragments located around the bacterial genome. Unique alleles at these loci are assigned arbitrary integer identifiers, which effectively summarizes the variation present in several thousand base pairs of genome sequence information as a series of numbers. Comparing bacterial isolates using allele-based methods efficiently corrects for the effects of lateral gene transfer present in many bacterial populations and is computationally efficient. This 'gene-by-gene' approach can be applied to larger collections of loci, such as the ribosomal protein genes used in ribosomal MLST (rMLST), up to and including the complete set of coding sequences present in a genome, whole-genome MLST (wgMLST), providing scalable, efficient and readily interpreted genome analysis.

Original publication

DOI

10.2217/fmb.14.24

Type

Journal article

Journal

Future Microbiol

Publication Date

2014

Volume

9

Pages

623 - 630

Keywords

MLST, clonal complex, gene-by-gene, ribosomal MLST, whole-genome MLST, Bacillus anthracis, Bacterial Typing Techniques, Base Sequence, Biodiversity, Genetic Variation, Genome, Bacterial, Microbial Sensitivity Tests, Multilocus Sequence Typing, Neisseria meningitidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Sequence Analysis, DNA