The Genotypic Characterization of Cronobacter spp. Isolated in China

Cronobacter spp. (Enterobacter sakazakii) is an important pathogen contaminating powdered infant formula (PIF). To describe the genotypic diversity of Cronobacter isolated in China, we identified the isolates using fusA allele sequencing, and subtyped all of the isolates using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), and multiple-locus variable-number tandem-repeat analysis (MLVA). A total of 105 isolates were identified, which included C. sakazakii (58 isolates), C. malonaticus (30 isolates), C. dublinensis (11 isolates), C. turicensis (5 isolates), and C. muytjensii (1 isolate). These isolates were showed to have 85 PFGE-patterns, 71 sequence types (STs), and 55 MLVA-patterns. Comparisons among the three molecular subtyping methods revealed that the PFGE method was the most distinguishable tool in identifying clusters of Cronobacter spp. through DNA fingerprinting, and MLST method came second. However, ESTR-1, ESTR-2, ESTR-3, and ESTR-4 were not effective loci for subtyping Cronobacter spp. such that the MLVA method requires further improvement.