The impact of horizontal gene transfer on targeting the internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) to identify Acinetobacter junii strains

摘要

AimsDespite electrophoretic patterns of ITS PCR amplicons often suggesting only a single ITS sequence variant is present in strains of Acinetobacter junii, sequence data shows differences in ITS copies between and among them. This paper set out to explain why these ITS variants arise, and whether their presence compromises the reliability of the ITS targeted methods currently available for typing Ac.junii strains.