A tentative overview of the global Brucella population structure was produced by comparison with published typing data. Results All strains could be typed at all loci, with few exceptions for panel 2B loci. At the loci bruce04, bruce09 and bruce16, multiple bands were observed in the PCR products of 12, 9 and 6 strains, respectively. This may suggest that in some occasions multiple alleles are present in the DNA preparation. Besides, two strains were negative in PCR either for bruce07 or bruce30. In 69 animals,

strains were initially isolated from different organs, MK-4827 price contributing 121 extra strains. In sixteen among these animals, more than one genotype was observed (in one animal 5 different genotypes were found). In most cases, these genotypes were also observed in at least one other animal. In five cases, at least one of the genotypes was unique in the present collection, suggesting that the presence of multiple genotypes could be the result of a mutation event that occurred in the course of infection. Three of these new genotypes were the result of one repeat

unit changes at a single locus. The other two were a 2 repeat units change in bruce04 and a four repeat units change in bruce09. These observations suggest that occasionally the most highly mutable loci may vary in the course of Selleck CB-5083 infection. They also do not exclude the Repotrectinib order possibility that animals carrying multiple variants may have been infected by multiple strains present within the community. The 294 investigated marine mammal Brucella isolates which originated from 173 animals and one patient clustered in 117 different genotypes using the complete MLVA-16 assay. One representative for each genotype and animal was used for analysis, totalling 196 strains (Figures 1, 2, 3). Three main groups were identified, the B. ceti group, the B. pinnipedialis group Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase and a third group comprising the human isolate from New Zealand. The 117 representative genotypes were compared with the 18 terrestrial

mammal Brucella reference strains and published data (Figure 4). The 3 clusters were clearly separated from all the terrestrial mammal isolates. Figure 1 MLVA-16 clustering analysis of 102 B. ceti strains defines three groups of strains. All B. ceti isolates cluster into a first part (genotypes 1 to 74) of the dendogram constructed from MLVA-16 testing of 294 Brucella strains obtained from 173 marine mammals (pinnipeds, otter and cetaceans) and one human patient from New Zealand. One strain per genotype and per animal is included (consequently some animals are represented by more than one strain), 196 entries are listed corresponding to 117 genotypes. In the columns, the following data are presented: DNA batch (key), genotype, strain identification, organ, year of isolation, host (AWSD: Atlantic White Sided Dolphin), host (Latin name), geographic origin, MLVA panel 1 genotype, sequence type when described by Groussaud et al. [25].