par Struelens, Marc 
Référence Laboratory Diagnosis of Bacterial Infections, CRC Press, page (125-146)
Publication Publié, 2001-01
Référence Laboratory Diagnosis of Bacterial Infections, CRC Press, page (125-146)
Publication Publié, 2001-01
Partie d'ouvrage collectif
| Résumé : | Molecular epidemiology may be defined as the study of microbial pathogens with the use of high resolution genotyping methods which generate and test hypotheses regarding the mode of acquisition and the transmission of these infectious agents among human populations. Microbial isolates that are part of the same chain of transmission (and replication) from host to host or from the environment to host are clonally related, i.e., they are the recent progeny of the same ancestor (1-2). Although isolates of a given bacterial species share a common phylogeny and ecological niche(s) (see Chapter 2), epidemiologically unrelated isolates exhibit a considerable amount of genomic and phenotypic diversity, whereas epidemiologically (and clonally) related isolates are significantly more homogeneous. Polymorphic characters, called epidemiological markers, are scored by typing systems that are designed to optimize discrimination of epidemiologically related and unrelated pathogenic isolates. Thus, epidemiological typing systems are composed of a typing method and the cognate classification system which allocates isolates to a type that is based on their markers. When a complex set of characters is generated (e.g., a DNA restriction fragment pattern), the termjingerprint is used, and the comparison of patterns is called jingerprinting. |
