Table 1.

Examples of genomic tracing of disease epidemics.

Organism	Remark	Genome size (Mb)	Disease	Mode of transmission	Genome project reference	Methods
Methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)	Health‐care associated	1.9	Hospital infections	Contaminated hands	Harris et al. (2010)	WGS
Multidrug‐resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MDR‐Aci)	Health‐care associated	3.03	Hospital infection	Contaminated clothing and bedclothes, bed rails, ventilators, sinks and doorknobs	Lewis et al. (2010)	WGS
Group A Streptococcus (GAS)		1.89	e.g., septic scarlet fever, pharyngitis	Scratches or bites from animals, consumption of contaminated meat or water or inhalation of bacteria	Beres et al. (2010)	WGS and high‐throughput SNP typing
Listeria monocytogenes	Food contamination	2.81	Listeriosis	Food‐borne	Gilmour et al. (2010)	WGS and SNP/indel typing
Mycobacterium tuberculosis		4.02	Tuberculosis	Human‐to‐human	Schürch et al. (2010a,b)	WGS and SNP typing
Bacillus anthracis	Potential bioterrorism agent	4.4	Anthrax	Inhalation of spores, cutaneous contact with spores or spore‐contaminated materials, ingestion of food contaminated with spores	Kuroda et al. (2010)	WGS and 80‐tag SNP typing
Francisella tularensis	Biological weapon	1.89	Tularaemia	Contact with infected rabbits and other rodents	Pandya et al. (2009)	Resequencing array and SNP typing

WGS, whole‐genome sequencing.