MLST revisited: the gene-by-gene approach to bacterial genomics.

Maiden, Martin C. J.; van Rensburg, Melissa J. Jansen; Bray, James E.; Earle, Sarah G.; Ford, Suzanne A.; Jolley, Keith A.; McCarthy, Noel D.

Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) was proposed in 1998 as a portable sequence-based method for identifying clonal relationships among bacteria. Today, in the whole-genome era of microbiology, the need for systematic, standardized descriptions of bacterial genotypic variation remains a priority. Here, to meet this need, we draw on the successes of MLST and 16S rRNA gene sequencing to propose a hierarchical gene-by-gene approach that reflects functional and evolutionary relationships and catalogues bacteria 'from domain to strain'. Our gene-based typing approach using online platforms such as the Bacterial Isolate Genome Sequence Database (BIGSdb) allows the scalable organization and analysis of whole-genome sequence data.

RIBOSOMAL RNA genetics; BACTERIAL genomes; NUCLEOTIDE sequence; CLONING; MICROBIOLOGY

Nature Reviews Microbiology, 2013, Vol 11, Issue 10, p728

1740-1526

Academic Journal

10.1038/nrmicro3093