The occurrence of LCMV or LCMV-related viruses in several rodent species in Europe has led to the suggestion that LCMV could represent a complex of strains or closely related arenaviruses hosted by different rodent species (12, 14 ).
Many of the genes associated with ecological interactions are present in the genomes of both commensal and pathogenic strains, suggesting that this species, like many others, should be regarded as a complex of strains oscillating between commensalism and pathogenicity [5, 6].
The procedure is analogous to that of computing clonal complexes of strains as is typically done with MLST data (35, 36), but with the objective of using information from the multiple B. cereus group MLST schemes as well as results from the multiple AFLP studies.
In the A6 complex of O157 H7 strains, the Sakai strain that caused outbreaks in Japan and 2 US strains had identical lysP alleles (ST-66ST-66 were distinct from the commonly used EDL933 reference strain (ST-69), a finding that suggests that genetic differences may also further distinguish the A6 clonal complex into subclones.
Analysis of A5 type strain (G5101) showed that it carried a +776 uidA SNP, which appears to have been acquired before the emergence of A5, because it is found only in A5 strains and A6 clonal complex of O157 H7 strains (3 ).
Conclusions: The CMV isolates obtained from our patient were complex mixtures of strains.
While both the complex distribution of strains in the aspirated tissue and the time scale of our tests do limit our ability to rule out some possible models of strain-sensitivity, our results put sharp limits on the form, the time scale, and the spatial scale of any such hypothetical response.
This technology determines the clonal complex (CC) of strains.
At the center of the model is a hypothetical "intermediate" strain (ancestor A3), which evolved from the A2 clonal complex of O55:H7 strains that are closely related but ancestral to O157 H7 (2 ).
Each virus is part of a larger complex of related strains or species that also infect honey bees: DWV and Varroa destructor virus 1 (VDV-1) are in the Iflaviridae; IAPV, Acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV), and Kashmir bee virus (KBV) are in the Dicistroviridae.
In addition to the strains from ST-21, ST-45, and ST-48 complexes, groups of strains with identical STs were found from three additional clonal complexes (ST-353, ST-354, and ST-403).
