High-resolution melting PCR analysis for rapid genotyping of Burkholderia mallei.

Burkholderia (B.) mallei is the causative agent of glanders. A previous work conducted on single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) extracted from the whole genome sequences of 45 B. mallei isolates identified 3 lineages for this species. In this study, we designed a high-resolution melting (HRM) method for the screening of 15 phylogenetically informative SNPs within the genome of B. mallei that subtype the species into 3 lineages and 12 branches/sub-branches/groups. The present results demonstrate that SNP-based genotyping represent an interesting approach for the molecular epidemiology analysis of B. mallei.