Note: MIRU-VNTR typing optionally combined with spoligotyping provide(s) the greatest discriminatory power.
Therefore, MIRU-VNTR plus spoligo data are especially suited for identification of close relatives by similarity search.
However, for tree-based phylogenetic identification we recommend using MIRU-VNTR data, best based on 24 loci,
and SNPs or LSPs if available, but not spoligotyping.
Spoligo data frequently shows homoplasy problems, while significantly less problems are seen with MIRU-VNTR data
and almost none with LSP and SNP data
(
Allix-Beguec et al., JCM 2008;
Comas et al., PloS One 2009).
Nevertheless, a posteriori visualisation of corresponding spoligotypes on the tree can be used for
further analysis of lineage assignation, based on known informative spoligotype signatures.