Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex CRISPR genotyping: improving efficiency, throughput and discriminative power of ‘spoligotyping’ with new spacers and a microbead-based hybridization assay Zhang, Jian and Abadia, Edgar and Refregier, Guislaine and Tafaj, Silva and Boschiroli, Maria Laura and Guillard, Bertrand and Andremont, Antoine and Ruimy, Raymond and Sola, Christophe,, 59, 285-294 (2010), doi = https://doi.org/10.1099/jmm.0.016949-0, publicationName = Microbiology Society, issn = 0022-2615, abstract= The aims of the present study were to implement a microbead-based ‘spoligotyping’ technique and to evaluate improvements by the addition of a panel of 25 extra spacers that we expected to provide an increased resolution on principal genetic group 1 (PGG 1) strains. We confirmed the high sensitivity and reproducibility of the classical technique using the 43 spacer panel and we obtained perfect agreement between the membrane-based and the microbead-based techniques. We further demonstrated an increase in the discriminative power of an extended 68 spacer format for differentiation of PGG 1 clinical isolates, in particular for the East African–Indian clade. Finally, we define a limited yet highly informative reduced 10 spacer panel set which could offer a more cost-effective option for implementation in resource-limited countries and that could decrease the need for additional VNTR (variable number of tandem repeats) genotyping work in molecular epidemiological studies. We also present an economic analysis comparing membrane-based and microbead-based techniques., language=, type=