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. 2008 Oct 3;3(10):e3326. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003326

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Dowd et al.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.

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The most prevalent bacterial genera were used to perform multivariate hierarchical clustering. Using a geographic X scale and a color map we represent the 40 different wounds along the Y-axis and the predominant genera along the X-axis in this dendogram, which shows 8 primary clusters associated with possible functional equivalent pathogroups (FEPs). Thus, in cluster 1 (red dots) we see that the predominant genera are Serratia spp. and anaerobes (Finegoldia, Peptoniphilus and Anaerococus spp.). Together these genera contribute to FEP in cluster 1. Cluster 2 (yellow Y's) is made up of Corynebacterium and the same anaerobes as cluster 1. The most predominant cluster, cluster 3 (orange squares), involves Streptococcus and anaerobes including the previously mentioned genera from clusters 1 and 2 as well as Bacteroides. Cluster 4 (green diamond) is only a single sample but involves co-occurrence of Pseudomonas, Streptococcus and Porphyomonas spp. Cluster 5 (blue x's) is heavily populated by anaerobes particularly Bacteroides, Anaerococcus, Fingoldia, and Peptoniphilus spp. Cluster 6 (green crosses) is only made up of two samples and includes Enterococcus as the primary organism with significant signatures from Anaerococcus, Finegoldia, and Peptoniphilus spp. Cluster 7 (blue Z's) has the strongest color map signatures associated with anaerobes, especially Clostridium, Fingoldia, Porphyromonas and Peptoniphilus spp. Finally, cluster 8 is strongly associated with the anaerobes Anaerococcus and Fingoldia spp. with additional contributions from Streptococcus spp. The location of each extremity ulcer is also encoded into this figure along the Y-axis. The codes for the wound locations are lateral foot ulcer (L), dorsal foot ulcer (D), plantar foot ulcer (P), ankle ulcer (A), 5th metatarsal head ulcer (A), 4th metatarsal head ulcer (4), 2nd Metatarsal head ulcer (2), trans metatarsal ulcer (T), 1st metatarsal head ulcer (1), Great toe ulcer (G), and heel ulcer (H).