Evidence for clonal evolution among highly polymorphic genes in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

ABSTRACT: The evolution of Staphylococcus aureus has been described as predominantly clonal, based on evidence from seven housekeeping genes. We aimed to test if this was also true for more polymorphic genes. In a collection of 60 isolates including major European epidemic methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and sporadic MRSA strains, we compared the partial gene sequences of seven housekeeping genes (arcC, aroE, glpF, gmk, pta, tpi, and yqiL), six core adhesion genes (present in all strains) (clfA, clfB, fnbA, map, sdrC, and spa), and four accessory adhesion genes (not present in all strains) (ebpS, fnbB, sdrD, and sdrE). Nucleotide diversity of adhesion genes was 2- to 10-fold higher than genes used for multilocus sequence typing. All genes showed evidence for purifying selection with a weakly

SUBMITTER: Kuhn G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1317586 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature