Recent developments of spoligotyping as applied to the study of epidemiology, biodiversity and molecular phylogeny of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.

Spoligotyping (for 'spacer-oligonucleotide-typing'), a rapid method for gen otyping of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex using the principle of revers e hybridization, is based on the structure of the direct repeat (DR) locus. The DR locus is made up of a variable number of 36 bp DR repeats that are separated by unique inter-DR sequences of 35 to 41 bp. Fast and highly disc riminatory, spoligotyping is an useful alternative to the IS6110-RFLP refer ence method for molecular typing of M. tuberculosis, in particular for isol ates possessing five or few copies of IS6110. In this paper, we review the stale of the art of spoligotyping through its main current applications. Af ter a brief introduction to the principle of the technique and ifs descript ion, we successively review recently published results concerning the molec ular epidemiology of tuberculosis in humans and cattle, and discuss the mai n genotyping strategies currently in use to fingerprint the M. tuberculosis complex organisms. We also describe the recent applications of spoligotypi ng to study ancient DNA and report on recent developments of this technique to study the biodiversity of the M. tuberculosis complex, its contribution towards improved taxonomy and phylogenetics of the M. tuberculosis complex . Last but not least, potential applications of spoligotyping to study DNA recombination mechanisms are also discussed. (C) 2000 Editions scientifique s et medicales Elsevier SAS.