Table 1. Key features of k-mer, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) approaches relevant to laboratories providing routine public health functions.

Features	K-mer	SNP	MLST
Epidemiological concordance	Intermediate	High	High
Discrimination	Intermediate	High	High
Stable strain nomenclature	No	No	Yes
International standardisation	No	No	Yes
Scalability	No	No	Yes
Speed	Intermediate	Slow SNP calling, slow comparisons	Slow allele calling, fast comparisons
Local computing requirements	Low	High	Low
Local bioinformatics expertise required	Yes	Yes	No
Curation of database	No	No	Yes

SNP: single nucleotide polymorphisms; MLST: extended multilocus sequence typing.