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Corynebacterium diphtheriae

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Molecular Typing in Bacterial Infections

Part of the book series: Infectious Disease ((ID))

Abstract

Global population of Corynebacterium diphtheriae is mainly represented by local genotypes whose circulation is under strong influence of human host factors, including health control measures, first of all, vaccination, and social economic conditions. Substantial endemic circulation of toxigenic C. diphtheriae is observed in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, South America, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. At the same time, persistent foci of diphtheria exist in developed countries eventually causing small outbreaks. The epidemic reemergence of diphtheria in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s emphasized the continued threat of this disease. Primary methods established for C. diphtheriae strain typing since 1990s are ribotyping (gold standard), PFGE (pulsed-field gel electrophoresis), AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism), and RAPD (randomly amplified polymorphic DNA) techniques that are either labor-intensive and/or insufficiently discriminatory. Portable and discriminatory typing methods of C. diphtheriae are still needed to identify and rapidly monitor subtle changes in the genome structure at an infraclonal level during and between epidemics. Complete genome sequencing opened new perspectives in search for new typing schemes. In this view, CRISPR (clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), MLST (multilocus sequence typing), and VNTR (variable number of tandem repeats) based schemes are being developed for high-resolution typing and databasing of C. diphtheriae; their reproducibility, stability, and discriminatory power remain to be investigated both in local settings and global collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, St. Petersburg Pasteur Institute, 14 Mira street, St. Petersburg, 197101, Russia

    Igor Mokrousov

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  1. Igor Mokrousov
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Correspondence to Igor Mokrousov .

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  1. Instituto Nacional de Controle de, Qualidade em Saúde, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ), Av. Brasil 4365, Rio de Janeiro, 21045-900, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Ivano de Filippis

  2. Microbiology, BioReliance Corporation, Broschart Road 14920, Rockville, 20850, Maryland, USA

    Marian L. McKee

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Mokrousov, I. (2013). Corynebacterium diphtheriae . In: de Filippis, I., McKee, M. (eds) Molecular Typing in Bacterial Infections. Infectious Disease. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-185-1_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-185-1_17

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-62703-184-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-62703-185-1

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