A European laboratory network for sequence-based typing of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as a communication platform between human and veterinary medicine – an update on SeqNet.org

SeqNet.org is currently an initiative of 44 laboratories from 25 European countries and one laboratory from Lebanon (Table 1), founded in 2004, in collaboration with the Robert Koch Institute at the University of Münster, Germany (http://www.SeqNet.org). Since then, its main objective is to establish a European network of excellence for sequence-based typing of microbial pathogens, having its main focus on Staphylococcus aureus [1]. SeqNet.org comprises a large number of national reference laboratories as well as university laboratories. The principle goal of SeqNet.org is to generate unambiguous, easily comparable typing data in electronic, portable form to be used by infection control at a local level as well as national and European surveillance of sentinel micro-organisms, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). spa-typing has been shown to be a useful tool in molecular hospital epidemiology [2,3]. Veterinary laboratories have recently joined the SeqNet.org initiative as MRSA has become an emerging problem in veterinary medicine [4,5]. spa-typing data from human and veterinary medicine can be compared using the spa server database [6]. .