Diversity of ACME and SCCmec among S. epidermidis.

1“+” methicillin-resistant S. epidermidis; “−”, methicillin-susceptible S. epidermidis; 2CC, clonal complex, as previously defined by eBURST analysis [15], [16]; S, singleton; 3MLST, multilocus sequence typing [14]; 7-loci allelic profile listed in parenthesis (arcC-aroE-gtr-mutS-pyrR-tpiA-yqiL); 4ACME PCR scan method [5] defines genetic variants within 3 ACME allotypes: ACME-I contains arc and opp-3 gene clusters; ACME-II contains arc but not opp-3; and ACME-III contains opp-3 but not arc. ACME-neg is negative for both arc and opp-3. Amplicons from the ACME PCR scan for 5 underlined ACME-I.02 variants were used for DNA sequencing and construction of 25-kb contigs. 5NH, no hybridization with arcCB probe; ClaI-arcCB banding patterns shown in Figure 3; 6SCCmec typing to identify class A, B, C, and other non-typeable (NT) mec gene complex, and 5 types of ccr gene complex, ccrAB1, ccrAB2, ccrAB3, ccrAB4, ccrC. SCCmec type I contains B/ccrAB1; type II A/ccrAB2; type III A/ccrAB3; type IV B/ccrAB2; and type V C/ccrC.