BACKGROUND In comparison to restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) typing, variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) typing is easier to perform, faster and yields results in a simple, numerical format. Therefore, this technique has gained recognition as the new international gold standard in typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, some reports indicated that VNTR typing may be le...

Molecular typing based on variable-number tandem repeats (VNTR) analysis is a promising tool for identifying transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, the currently proposed 15- and 24-locus VNTR sets (VNTR-15/24) only have limited resolution and contain too many loci for large-scale typing in high burden countries. To develop an optimal typing scheme in China, we evaluated the resol...

BACKGROUND Combining different molecular typing methods for Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) can be a powerful tool for molecular epidemiology-based investigation of TB. However, the current standard method that provides high discriminatory power for such a combination, mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units-variable numbers of tandem repeats typing (MIRU-VNTR), is laborious, time...

Sixty-eight ancestral Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates were previously identified by using the tuberculosis-specific deletion 1 (TbD1) PCR and mycobacterial interspersed-repetitive-unit-variable-number tandem repeat (MIRU-VNTR) typing (Y. J. Sun, R. Bellamy, A. S. G. Lee, S. T. Ng, S. Ravindran, S.-Y. Wong, C. Locht, P. Supply, and N. I. Paton, J. Clin. Microbiol. 42:1986-1993, 2004). These ...

Variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR) typing with a panel of 24 loci is the current gold standard in the molecular typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolates. However, because of technical problems, a part of the loci often cannot be amplified by multiplex PCRs. Therefore, a considerable number of single-locus PCRs have to be performed for the loci with missing results, which impairs ...

The Mycobacterium tuberculosis Beijing family isolates may cause more than a quarter of all tuberculosis cases worldwide, are emerging in some areas, and are often associated with drug resistance. Early recognition of transmission of this genotype is therefore important. To evaluate the usefulness of variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR) typing to discriminate and recognize strains of the Beijin...

Although variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR) typing has gained recognition as the new standard for the DNA fingerprinting of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) isolates, external quality control programs have not yet been developed. Therefore, we organized the first multicenter proficiency study on 24-locus VNTR typing. Sets of 30 DNAs of MTBC strains, including 10 duplicate DNA samples...

Genotyping based on variable-number tandem repeats (VNTR) is currently a very promising tool for studying the molecular epidemiology and phylogeny of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Here we investigate the polymorphisms of 48 loci of direct or tandem repeats in M. tuberculosis previously identified by our group. Thirty-nine loci, including nine novel ones, were polymorphic. Ten VNTR loci had high a...

In a previous study, we proposed to associate spoligotyping and typing with the variable number of tandem DNA repeats (VNTR) as an alternative strategy to IS6110-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) for molecular epidemiological studies on tuberculosis. The aim of the present study was to further evaluate this PCR-based typing strategy and to describe the population structure of Myco...

An evaluation of the utility of rep PCR typing compared to the 15 loci discriminatory set of MIRU-VNTR was undertaken. Twenty-nine isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from patients were examined. Genomic DNA was extracted from the isolates by standard method. The number of copies of tandem repeats of the 15 MIRU-VNTR loci was determined by PCR amplification and agarose gel electrophoresis of...