Two approaches to Staphylococcus aureus typing

Typing of Staphylococcus aureus is carried out to detect outbreaks, monitor transmission and infer virulence and resistance properties. There are now many different extant typing methods. This article summarises the broad classes of typing approaches and describes two methods. One is based on micro-array technology while the other is based upon the interrogation of polymorphic sites using real-time PCR.