Nearly 2,000 ribotyping-based studies exist, ranging from epidemiology to phylogeny and taxonomy. None precisely reveals the molecular genetic basis, with many incorrectly attributing detected polymorphisms to rRNA gene sequences. Based on in silico genomics, we demonstrate that ribotype polymorphisms result from sequence variability in neutral housekeeping genes flanking rRNA operons, with rRNA gene sequences serving solely as conserved, flank-linked tags. We also reveal that from such an informatics perspective, it is readily feasible a priori to design an interpretable ribotyping scheme for a genomically sequenced microbial species, and we discuss limitations to the basic restriction fragment length polymorphism-based method as well as alternate PCR ribotyping-based schemes.

中文翻译：

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核糖体分型的分子遗传学基础。

存在近 2,000 项基于核糖体分型的研究，范围从流行病学到系统发育和分类学。没有一个能准确揭示分子遗传基础，许多人错误地将检测到的多态性归因于 rRNA 基因序列。基于计算机基因组学，我们证明核糖型多态性是由 rRNA 操纵子侧翼的中性看家基因的序列变异引起的，rRNA 基因序列仅用作保守的侧翼连接标签。我们还揭示，从这样的信息学角度来看，为基因组测序的微生物物种设计可解释的核糖分型方案是很容易先验的，我们讨论了基于限制性片段长度多态性的基本方法以及替代 PCR 核糖分型的局限性。基于方案。