DNA macroarray for identification and typing of Staphylococcus aureus isolates.

A DNA macroarray containing 465 intragenic amplicons was designed to identify Staphylococcus aureus at the species level and to type S. aureus isolates. The genes selected included those encoding (i) S.

Characteristics of French methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates with decreased susceptibility or resistance to glycopeptides.

According to the French Society of Microbiology, Staphylococcus aureus isolates are suspected to have decreased susceptibility to glycopeptide(s) when at least one colony is able to grow from an inoculum of 10 microL of 2 McFarland bacterial suspension plated on Mueller-Hinton agar containing 5 mg/L teicoplanin and incubated for 48 h at 35-37 degrees C. We analysed 89 methicillin-resistant S. aureus isolates (MRSA), collected in 2000-2001 from 24 hospitals located in 18 French cities, which were able to grow on this selective medium.

Harmonization of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis protocols for epidemiological typing of strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus: a single approach developed by consensus in 10 European laboratories and its application for tracing the spread of related strains.

Pulsed-fieldgel electrophoresis (PFGE) is the most common genotypic method used in reference and clinical laboratories for typing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Many different protocols have been developed in laboratories that have extensive experience with the technique and have established national databases. However, the comparabilities of the different European PFGE protocols for MRSA and of the various national MRSA clones themselves had not been addressed until now.

Clonal diversity among streptogramin A-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates collected in French hospitals.

We analyzed 62 clinical isolates of streptogramin A-resistant (SGA(r)) Staphylococcus aureus collected between 1981 and 2001 in 14 hospitals located in seven French cities. These isolates, including five with decreased susceptibility to glycopeptides, were distributed into 45 antibiotypes and 38 SmaI genotypes. Each of these genotypes included between 1 and 11 isolates, the SmaI patterns of which differed by no more than three bands.

Several regions of the repeat domain of the Staphylococcus caprae autolysin, AtlC, are involved in fibronectin binding.

The autolysin AtlC is the only known fibronectin-binding protein in Staphylococcus caprae strain 96007. The fibronectin-binding domain of AtlC consists of three repeats (AtlCR(1)R(2)R(3)), which are located between the two enzymatic domains. The AtlCR(1)R(2)R(3) domain and the AtlCR(1)R(2) and AtlCR(3) subdomains were expressed separately as His(6)-tagged proteins.

Tn5406, a new staphylococcal transposon conferring resistance to streptogramin a and related compounds including dalfopristin.

We characterized a new transposon, Tn5406 (5,467 bp), in a clinical isolate of Staphylococcus aureus (BM3327). It carries a variant of vgaA, which encodes a putative ABC protein conferring resistance to streptogramin A but not to mixtures of streptogramins A and B. It also carries three putative genes, the products of which exhibit significant similarities (61 to 73% amino acid identity) to the three transposases of the staphylococcal transposon Tn554.

Tracking adhesion factors in Staphylococcus caprae strains responsible for human bone infections following implantation of orthopaedic material.

Ten Staphylococcus caprae strains isolated from four patients and responsible for bone infections following implantation of orthopaedic material were compared to four S. caprae strains collected from milk samples of healthy goats. The following characteristics were investigated: Smal patterns, hybridization patterns with pBA2 (ribotypes), slime production, adhesion to matrix proteins (fibrinogen, fibronectin, collagen) and the staphylococcal adhesion genes (fnbA, clfA, cna, atlE, ica, fbe).