Multilocus Sequence Typing (MLST) for Characterization of Enterobacter cloacae

Abstract

Enterobacter cloacae is an important emerging pathogen, which sometime causes respiratory infection, surgical site infection, urinary infection, sepsis, and outbreaks at neonatal units. We have developed a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme utilizing seven housekeeping genes and evaluated the performance in 101 clinical isolates. The MLST scheme yielded 83 sequence types (ST) including 78 novel STs found in the clinical isolates. These findings supported the robustness of the MLST scheme developed in this study.