Rodriguez Campos, SabrinaNavarro, YurenaRomero Martínez, BeatrizJuan Ferré, Lucía DeBezos Garrido, JavierMateos García, Ana IsabelGolby, PaulSmith, Noel HHewinson, Glyn RGarcía de Viedma, DaríoAranaz Martín, AliciaDomínguez Rodríguez, Lucas José2023-06-192023-06-192013-111098-660X10.1128 /JCM.01271-13https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/35287Mycobacterium bovis populations in countries with persistent bovine tuberculosis usually show a prevalent spoligotype with a wide geographical distribution. This study applied mycobacterial interspersed repetitive-unit-variable-number tandem-repeat (MIRU-VNTR) typing to a random panel of 115 M. bovis isolates that are representative of the most frequent spoligotype in the Iberian Peninsula, SB0121. VNTR typing targeted nine loci: ETR-A (alias VNTR2165), ETR-B (VNTR2461), ETR-D (MIRU4, VNTR580), ETR-E (MIRU31, VNTR3192), MIRU26 (VNTR2996), QUB11a (VNTR2163a), QUB11b (VNTR2163b), QUB26 (VNTR4052), and QUB3232 (VNTR3232). We found a high degree of diversity among the studied isolates (discriminatory index [D] = 0.9856), which were split into 65 different MIRU-VNTR types. An alternative short-format MIRU-VNTR typing targeting only the four loci with the highest variability values was found to offer an equivalent discriminatory index. Minimum spanning trees using the MIRU-VNTR data showed the hypothetical evolution of an apparent clonal group. MIRU-VNTR analysis was also applied to the isolates of 176 animals from 15 farms infected by M. bovis SB0121; in 10 farms, the analysis revealed the coexistence of two to five different MIRU types differing in one to six loci, which highlights the frequency of undetected heterogeneity.engjournal articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1128 /JCM.01271-13restricted accessVeterinaria3109 Ciencias Veterinarias