Neisseria gonorrhoeae multi-antigen sequence typing: a new genotyping method

Abstract

The typing of gonococcus involves phenotypic analysis and molecular genotyping. Neisseria gonorrhoeae multi-antigen sequence typing (NG-MAST) is a sequence-based genotyping method with a broad prospect. NG-MAST system is not only suitable for cultured specimens, but also for swab samples. It allows the typing of N.gonorrhoeae strains by blasting against databases at NG-MAST Web site following amplification of variable internal regions of por and tbpB genes of gonococcal strains using PCR and sequencing of PCR products.Compared with other genotyping methods, NG-MAST appears simple and objective, and tends to produce results with satisfactory comparability between national and international laboratories. This system has been extensively used in predicting gonococcal resistance, analyzing sexual networks, identifying outbreak and epidemic strains, and so on. Key words: Neisseria gonorrhoeae ; Sequence analysis ; Evaluation studies ;