DNA Microarray-Based Typing of Streptococcus agalactiae Isolates

Streptococcus agalactiae frequently colonizes the urogenital tract, and it is a major cause of bacterial septicemia, meningitis, and pneumonia in newborns. For typing purposes, a microarray targeting group B streptococcus (GBS) virulence-associated markers and resistance genes was designed and validated with reference strains, as well as clinical and veterinary isolates. Selected isolates were also subjected to multilocus sequence typing. It was observed that putative typing markers, such as alleles of the alpha-like protein or capsule types, vary independently of each other, and they also vary independently from the affiliation to their multilocus sequence typing (MLST)-defined sequence types. Thus, it is not possible to assign isolates to sequence types based on the identification of a single distinct marker, such as a capsule type or alp allele. This suggests the occurrence of frequent genomic recombination. For array-based typing, a set of 11 markers (bac, alp, pil1 locus, pepS8, fbsB, capsule locus, hylB, abiG-I/-II plus Q8DZ34, pil2 locus, nss plus srr plus rogB2, and rgfC/A/D/B) was defined that provides a framework for splitting the tested 448 S. agalactiae isolates into 76 strains that clustered mainly according to MLST-defined clonal complexes. There was evidence for region- and host-specific differences in the population structure of S. agalactiae, as well as an overrepresentation of strains related to sequence type 17 among the invasive isolates. The arrays and typing scheme described here proved to be a convenient tool for genotyping large numbers of clinical/veterinary isolates and thus might help obtain insight into the epidemiology of S. agalactiae.