TABLE 1.

Housekeeping loci under study^a

Locus	Putative function of gene product	Size of sequenced fragment (bp)	No. of alleles identified	No. of polymorphic nucleotide sites	No. of polymorphic amino acid sites	% Nucleotide divergence between pairs of alleles		Chromosomal location (no. of kb from ori)b	GenBank no.
						Maximum	Average
gki	Glucose kinase	498	34	36	12	2.6	1.3	1259	AJ302470–AJ302503
gtr	Glutamine transport ATP-binding protein	450	32	30	9	2.6	1	1237	AJ302504–AJ302535
murl	Glutamate racemase	438	24	21	6	1.4	0.8	313	AJ406970–AJ406993
mutS	DNA mismatch repair (HexA)	405	21	23	9	2.2	0.9	1788	AJ406994–AJ407014
recP	Transketolase	459	35	59	11	6.1	1.9	1392	AJ407015–AJ407049
xpt	Xanthine phosphoribosyltransferase	450	29	31	10	2.9	0.8	931	AJ291638–AJ291666
yqiL	Acetoacetyl-CoA thiolase (AtoB)	434	22	22	12	1.4	0.7	129	AJ291616–AJ291637

^aAlleles of the seven housekeeping loci can be obtained (http://www.mlst.net). 

^bThe emm gene is located at kb 1685, relative to the origin, based on the genome of GAS strain 700294 (www.genome.ou.edu; 10 February 2001). The size of the strain 700294 genome is 1,852 kb.