Evaluation of the epidemiological relevance of variable-number tandem-repeat genotyping of Mycobacterium bovis and comparison of the method with IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis and spoligotyping.

ABSTRACT: Sources of Mycobacterium bovis contamination remain unclear for many cases of animal and human disease. A major limitation is the lack of sufficiently informative or epidemiologically well evaluated molecular methods for typing. Here, we report an evaluation of a high-throughput method based on 29 mycobacterial interspersed repetitive unit-variable-number tandem-repeat (MIRU-VNTR) loci to genotype 127 M. bovis isolates from cattle from 77 different Belgian farms, representative of a nationwide collection obtained from 1995 to 2003. MIRU-VNTR stability was demonstrated by analyzing a series of 74 isolates in total, obtained from different animals from a single farm or from different farms with an identified epidemiological link. The genotyping results and the genotypic diversity (h) were co

SUBMITTER: Allix C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1489394 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature