Multilocus Sequence Typing as a Replacement for Serotyping in Salmonella enterica

Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica is traditionally subdivided into serovars by serological and nutritional characteristics. We used Multilocus Sequence Typing (MLST) to assign 4,257 isolates from 554 serovars to 1092 sequence types (STs). The majority of the isolates and many STs were grouped into 138 genetically closely related clusters called eBurstGroups (eBGs). Many eBGs correspond to a serovar, for example most Typhimurium are in eBG1 and most Enteritidis are in eBG4, but many eBGs contained more than one serovar. Furthermore, most serovars were polyphyletic and are distributed across multiple unrelated eBGs. Thus, serovar designations confounded genetically unrelated isolates and failed to…

• NU
  National University of Ireland
• WT
  Wellcome Trust
• KI
  Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• IC
  Imperial College London
• UO
  University of Galway
• UC
  University College Cork
• BF
  Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
• ID
  Institut de Veille Sanitaire
• RK
  Robert Koch Institut
• DF
  Directorate for Biological Sciences
• BF
  Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung