Comparative genomics of Burkholderia multivorans isolates to assess likelihood of cross-infection

A 68-year-old female patient with non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis and her 41-year-old son with cystic fibrosis both isolated Burkholderia multivorans in their sputum. Isolates from mother and son were genotyped by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) to assess the likelihood of cross-infection. Multilocus sequence typing revealed the isolates to be of the same sequence type (ST-439). To further investigate the likelihood of cross infection, whole genome sequencing (WGS) of both isolates was performed, as WGS offers much higher resolution than MLST. Based on the number of nucleotide differences observed between the isolates from mother and son, we concluded that cross-infection was unlikely, despite the opportunity for it to have occurred.