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Multilocus sequence typing of Cronobacter sakazakii and Cronobacter malonaticus reveals stable clonal structures with clinical significance which do not correlate with biotypes

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Baldwin, Adam, Loughlin, Michael, Dr., Caubilla-Barron, Juncal, Kucerova, Eva, Manning, Georgina, Dowson, Christopher G. and Forsythe, S. J. (Steve J.). (2009) Multilocus sequence typing of Cronobacter sakazakii and Cronobacter malonaticus reveals stable clonal structures with clinical significance which do not correlate with biotypes. BMC Microbiology, Vol.9 (Article 223). ISSN 1471-2180

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-9-223

Abstract

Background: The Cronobacter genus (Enterobacter sakazakii) has come to prominence due to its association with infant infections, and the ingestion of contaminated reconstituted infant formula. C. sakazakii and C. malonaticus are closely related, and are defined according their biotype. Due to the ubiquitous nature of the organism, and the high severity of infection for the immunocompromised, a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme has been developed for the fast and reliable identification and discrimination of C. sakazakii and C. malonaticus strains. It was applied to 60 strains of C. sakazakii and 16 strains of C. malonaticus, including the index strains used to define the biotypes. The strains were from clinical and non-clinical sources between 1951 and 2008 in USA, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and the Far East.
Results: This scheme uses 7 loci; atpD, fusA, glnS, gltB, gyrB, infB, and pps. There were 12 sequence types (ST) identified in C. sakazakii, and 3 in C. malonaticus. A third (22/60) of C. sakazakii strains were in ST4, which had almost equal numbers of clinical and infant formula isolates from 1951 to 2008. ST8 may represent a particularly virulent grouping of C. sakazakii as 7/8 strains were clinical in origin which had been isolated between 1977 - 2006, from four countries. C. malonaticus divided into three STs. The previous Cronobacter biotyping scheme did not clearly correspond with STs nor with species.
Conclusion: In conclusion, MLST is a more robust means of identifying and discriminating between C. sakazakii and C. malonaticus than biotyping. The MLST database for these organisms is available online at http://pubmlst.org/cronobacter/

Item Type:

Journal Article

Subjects:

Q Science > QR Microbiology
R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics

Divisions:

Faculty of Science > Life Sciences (2010- ) > Biological Sciences ( -2010)

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):

Enterobacteriaceae -- Research, Gram-negative bacteria -- Research, Infants -- Diseases, Bacterial genetics -- Research

Journal or Publication Title:

BMC Microbiology

Publisher:

BioMed Central Ltd.

ISSN:

1471-2180

Official Date:

23 October 2009

Dates:

Date	Event
23 October 2009	Published

Volume:

Vol.9

Number:

Article 223

Identification Number:

10.1186/1471-2180-9-223

Status:

Peer Reviewed

Access rights to Published version:

Open Access

Funder:

Nottingham Trent University (NTU), Micropathology Ltd., Medical Research Council (Great Britain) (MRC)

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