Table II. Staphylococcus aureus reference strains with clonal complex assignment. Table II indicates the clonal complex of the reference strain as determined by MLST. Also included is whether the strain is MRSA or MSSA. If a strain is MRSA then we differentiate between hospital-associated (HA) or community-associated (CA), if the strain is positive for pvl, and if it is a vancomycin intermediate strain (VISA). A mix of HA and CA strains were used for this study. The selection of reference strains dominantly represents CC8, which is the class of Sa strains that most commonly causes infection in the USA. (HA*) USA500 is annotated as HA* because there is not good epidemiological data for this strain and it has features of both HA and CA strains. (**) 502A was originally isolated from a neonate nurse in the 1960s, but was used for bacterial interference programs in the 1960s–1970s (75).
| STRAIN | CLONAL COMPLEX | VISA | MRSA | MSSA | HA-MRSA/CA-MRSA | pvl |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAC | CC8 | x | CA | + | ||
| SF8300 | CC8 | x | CA | + | ||
| Newman | CC8 | x | ||||
| USA500 | CC8 | x | HA* | |||
| COL | CC8 | x | HA | |||
| NCTC8325 | CC8 | x | ||||
| 502A | CC5 | x | ** | |||
| N315 | CC5 | x | HA | |||
| Mu50 | CC5 | x | x | HA | ||
| EMRSA16 | CC30 | x | HA | |||
| MRSA252 | CC30 | x | HA | |||
| MSSA476 | CC1 | x | ||||
| MW2 | CC1 | x | CA | + |