2026/06/04 by Federica Palma, Mélanie Hennart, Keith A. Jolley +19 · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Bacterial Identification and Susceptibility Testing #Bacterial taxonomy #Epidemiological surveillance #Epidemiology #Identification (biology) #Multilocus sequence typing #Nomenclature #Salmonella and Campylobacter epidemiology #Strain (injury) #Typing #Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research
paper · pdf · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3003781
published in PLoS Biology 24(6), e3003781 (Public Library of Science)
openalex publication_date 2026/06/04 · openalex created_date 2026/06/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Unified strain taxonomies are needed for the epidemiological surveillance of bacterial pathogens and international communication in microbiological research. Core genome multilocus sequence typing (cgMLST) holds great promise for standardized high-resolution strain genotyping. However, this approach faces challenges including classification instability and disconnection of new nomenclature from widely adopted classical MLST identifiers. This Essay discusses the cgMLST-based Life Identification Number (LIN) method, recently proposed as a stable multilevel strain taxonomy system applicable to most bacterial pathogens, covering how LIN codes are implemented and used in practice for precise strain definitions and epidemiological tracking.