A multi-locus sequence typing scheme for the emerging respiratory pathogen Mycoplasma amphoriforme

Mycoplasma amphoriforme is an emerging respiratory pathogen for which little is known about the population structure or transmission dynamics. In this study, we developed the first multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme for M. amphoriforme and applied it to a previous genomic data set. The genomes of seven M. amphoriforme isolates from the UK and Denmark were sequenced and used to develop the MLST scheme based on loci used for previous Mycoplasma MLST schemes. The resulting MLST scheme consisted of four loci (gyrB, atpG, uvrA and rpoB) and was applied to 20 previously sequenced genomes obtained from the UK and France/Tunisia. From the 27 sequences examined, 13 sequence types were identified. A phylogenetic tree of concatenated sequences showed a comparable topology to a previously described tree based on whole genome data. Additionally, the MLST scheme corroborated the previous suggestion of possible healthcare-associated transmission of M. amphoriforme between two separate patients. The MLST scheme gave a population structure analysis comparable to previous whole-genome-based analyses.