Global Scale Dissemination of ST93: A Divergent Staphylococcus aureus Epidemic Lineage That Has Recently Emerged From Remote Northern Australia.

ABSTRACT: Background: In Australia, community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) lineage sequence type (ST) 93 has rapidly risen to dominance since being described in the early 1990s. We examined 459 ST93 genome sequences from Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, and Europe to investigate the evolutionary history of ST93, its emergence in Australia and subsequent spread overseas. Results: Comparisons with other S. aureus genomes indicate that ST93 is an early diverging and recombinant lineage, comprising of segments from the ST59/ST121 lineage and from a divergent but currently unsampled Staphylococcal population. However, within extant ST93 strains limited genetic diversity was apparent with the most recent common ancestor dated to 1977 (95% highest

SUBMITTER: van Hal SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6047344 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature