Population studies of important industrial contaminator B. cereus using multilocus sequence typing (MLST)-continued work

We have developed a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme for the Bacillus cereus group of bacteria (Helgason et al 2003). This group, which includes B. cereus, B. thuringiensis, B. weihenstephanensis, and B. anthracis, is known to be very diverse and is of great pathogenic as well as industrial importance. The method has a high resolution but still detects clonal lineages. It gives a great overview of the population structure and is an excellent tool for studying the population structure and epidemio logy of the B. cereus group. This proposal aims to further development of MLST (with partners) to investigate the population structure of the B.cereus-group and to detect isolates of industrial and medical importance.