Comparison of Molecular and In Silico Salmonella Serotyping for Salmonella Surveillance

Salmonella surveillance and outbreak management is a key function of public health. Laboratories are shifting from antigenic serotype determination to molecular methods including microarray or whole genome sequencing technologies. The objective of this study was to compare the Check&Trace Salmonella™ DNA microarray (CTS), a commercially available assay with the Salmonella in silico typing resource (SISTR), which uses whole genome sequencing technology for serotyping clinical Salmonella strains in Alberta, Canada, collected over an 18-month period. A high proportion of isolates (96.3%) were successfully typed by both systems. SISTR is a powerful tool for laboratories which already have a WGS infrastructure in place, whereas smaller laboratories can benefit from a commercial microarray system and reduce the processing cost per isolate compared to traditional serotyping.