IN SILICO MLST, SCCMEC AND SPA TYPING OF HUMAN MRSA STRAINS AND DETERMINATION OF ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE GENES

Abstract

Objective: The incidence of MRSA still remains an important public health problem. The aim of study was to perform in silico analysis of MLST, SCCmec, spa type, evolutionary similarity and whole-genome sequencing (WGS) based antimicrobial susceptibility testing by using genomic data of MRSA strains isolated from human infections in different countries. Methods: WGS data of 30 MRSA strains were obtained as etiological agents were download from NCBI. Phylogeny analysis with large data were performed via CSI Phylogeny online software. SCCmec, MLST and spa typing were performed using the software at the Center for Genomic Epidemiology. ResFinder 4.0 was used to perform WGS based antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Results: After in silico analysis of 30 MRSA strains, 14 different spa types, 11 different sequence types, and 9 different SCCmec types were detected. T037, ST239, and SCCmec_type_III(3A) were the most detected spa, MLST, and SCCmec types respectively. WGS based antimicrobial susceptibility testing results were analyzed, 28, 27, and 26 out of 30 MRSA strains carried aminoglycoside tetracycline and fluoroquinolone resistance genes respectively. Conclusions: According to our in silico analysis results, we found that similar typing profiles could be observed in the strains in different geographical locations and certain types of spa, MLST, and SCCmec can coexist.