Characterization of Clonal Relatedness among the Natural Population of <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i> Strains by Using <i>spa</i> Sequence Typing and the BURP (Based upon Repeat Patterns) Algorithm

Abstract

We evaluated the BURP (based upon repeat patterns) algorithm, which relies on sequencing of the Staphylococcus aureus protein A gene (spa), for its ability to infer clonal relatedness within a population of 110 wild-type strains. BURP clustering of the resulting 66 spa types was highly concordant with multilocus sequence typing (96.5% concordance) and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (94.9%).