Skip to main content

Table 1 Vancomycin resistant enterococci typing methods and accompanying characteristics

From: Enterococcus faecium: from microbiological insights to practical recommendations for infection control and diagnostics

Method

MLVA

MLST

PFGE

cgMLST

WGS

Transposon analysis

Principle

Fragment length of variable tandem repeat loci

Sequences of multiple house keeping genes

DNA based macro restriction analysis

Genome-wide gene-by-gene approach of 1423 genes on allelic level

Whole genome analysis

Sequences of transposon content and integration

Reproducibility

High

High

Medium

Excellent

Excellent

Excellent

Ease of performance

Very easy

Easy

Laborious

Easy

Easy

Easy

Data interpretation

Easy-moderate

Easy

Difficult

Easy

Various

Moderate

Ease of data exchange

Easy

Easy

Difficult

Easy

Possible

Possible

Costs

Low

Medium

Medium

High, extracted from WGS

High

High, extracted from WGS

Discriminatory power

Low

Medium

High

Excellent

Excellent

Additional

  1. MLVA Multiple Locus Variable Number of Tandem Repeat Analysis, MLST Multi-locus Sequence Typing, PFGE Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, cgMLST core-genome MLST, WGS whole-genome sequencing