Journal article

Extensive Diversity of Streptococcus pyogenes in a Remote Human Population Reflects Global-Scale Transmission Rather than Localised Diversification

RJ Towers, JR Carapetis, BJ Currie, MR Davies, MJ Walker, G Dougan, PM Giffard

Plos One | PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE | Published : 2013

Abstract

The Indigenous population of the Northern Territory of Australia (NT) suffers from a very high burden of Streptococcus pyogenes disease, including cardiac and renal sequelae. The aim of this study was to determine if S. pyogenes isolated from this population represent NT endemic strains, or conversely reflect strains with global distribution. emm sequence typing data were used to select 460 S. pyogenes isolates representing NT S. pyogenes diversity from 1987-2008. These isolates were genotyped using either multilocus sequence typing (MLST) or a high resolution melting-based MLST surrogate (Minim typing). These data were combined with MLST data from other studies on NT S. pyogenes to yield a ..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

This study was funded in part by the by a National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia) Post-doctoral training fellowship awarded to RT (Grant number 436034; http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/). No additional external funding was received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.