Comparison of High Resolution Viruelnce Allelic Profiling (HReVAP) typing with Multilocus Sequence Typing and Whole Genome SNPs analysis for typing VTEC strains

VTEC strains causing severe disease possess a large accessory genome composed of virulence genes existing in multiple allelic variants, which sometimes segregate with specific VTEC subpopulations. We developed an analytic pipeline termed High Resolution Virulence Allelic Profiling to derive allelic signatures based of a wide panel of virulence genes and cluster VTEC strains basing on the combination of alleles present in each strain. HReVAP Clustering results were then compared with Clustering according to MLST and Whole Genome SNPs analysis, producing philogenetic trees with similar topology and similar discriminatory power to those produce through Whole genome SNPs analysis.