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Staphylococcal Cassette Chromosome mec (SCCmec) Analysis of MRSA

Protocol
First Online:
Part of the Methods in Molecular Biology book series (MIMB, volume 2069)

Abstract

Methicillin-susceptible S. aureus changes to methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) upon the acquisition of staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec), a genomic island that encodes methicillin resistance. SCCmec elements in S. aureus are classified into different types based on the combination of mec gene complexes and ccr gene complexes, which share variations, five classes in mec and eight in ccr. To date, at least 13 types of SCCmec elements have been identified and each SCCmec type has individual characteristics. It is known that hospital-associated MRSA strains carry SCCmec elements of types, I, II, and III, and the majority of community-acquired MRSA strains carry characteristic SCCmec elements, type IV SCCmec or type V SCCmec. We herein describe multiplex PCR methods to type SCCmec elements by identifying the mec gene complex class and ccr gene complex type.

Key words

mecA mec gene complex ccr gene complex Cassette chromosome recombinase (ccr) Staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank Yuki Katayama, Keiichi Hiramatsu, Herminia de Lencastre, Bo Soderquist, Kunyan Zhang, Anders Rhod Larsen, and Mark Holmes for providing some reference strains used in this study. Furthermore, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to late Teruyo Ito for her great assistance.

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© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Microbiology and Infectious DiseaseToho UniversityOta-kuJapan

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