Fungal multilocus sequence typing--it's not just for bacteria.

Multilocus sequence typing uses nucleotide sequence from several genes to identify individual microbial pathogens. The data obtained for multilocus sequence typing can be used to recognize fungal species and to determine if the fungi are purely clonal, or if they also recombine. Genetic regions with more polymorphisms and microsatellites might be used to recognize populations within species and are well suited to Bayesian methods of assigning unknown individuals to populations of origin. Knowledge of species, populations and reproductive mode can help answer questions common to all emerging diseases: is the disease due to the recent spread of a pathogen, to the emergence of a virulent strain of an existing pathogen, or to a change in the environment that promotes disease?