About the Authors

Marc Stegger

Contributed equally to this work with: Marc Stegger, Cindy M. Liu

mtg@ssi.dk

Affiliations Microbiology and Infection Control, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark, Translational Genomics Research Institute, Pathogen Genomics Division, Flagstaff, Arizona, United States of America

Cindy M. Liu

Contributed equally to this work with: Marc Stegger, Cindy M. Liu

Affiliation Translational Genomics Research Institute, Pathogen Genomics Division, Flagstaff, Arizona, United States of America

Jesper Larsen

Affiliation Microbiology and Infection Control, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark

Katerina Soldanova

Affiliation Translational Genomics Research Institute, Pathogen Genomics Division, Flagstaff, Arizona, United States of America

Maliha Aziz

Affiliation Translational Genomics Research Institute, Pathogen Genomics Division, Flagstaff, Arizona, United States of America

Tania Contente-Cuomo

Affiliation Translational Genomics Research Institute, Pathogen Genomics Division, Flagstaff, Arizona, United States of America

Andreas Petersen

Affiliation Microbiology and Infection Control, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark

Stien Vandendriessche

Affiliation Laboratoire de Référence MRSA-Staphylocoques, Hôpital Erasme, Brussels, Belgium

Judy N. Jiménez

Affiliation Escuela de Microbiologia, Grupo de Microbiología Molecular, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia

Caterina Mammina

Affiliation Department of Sciences for Health Promotion “G. D’ Alessandro”, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

Alex van Belkum

Affiliation bioMérieux, Microbiology R&D, La Balme les Grottes, France

Saara Salmenlinna

Affiliation Department of Infectious Disease Surveillance and Control, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland

Frederic Laurent

Affiliation National Reference Center for Staphylococci, Laboratory of Bacteriology, Hôpital de la Croix Rousse, Inserm U851, Lyon, France

Robert L. Skov

Affiliation Microbiology and Infection Control, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark

Anders R. Larsen

Affiliation Microbiology and Infection Control, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark

Paal S. Andersen

Affiliations Microbiology and Infection Control, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark, Translational Genomics Research Institute, Pathogen Genomics Division, Flagstaff, Arizona, United States of America

Lance B. Price

Affiliations Translational Genomics Research Institute, Pathogen Genomics Division, Flagstaff, Arizona, United States of America, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, George Washington University, Washington DC, United States of America

Competing Interests

Alex van Belkum is currently employed by BioMérieux,Microbiology R&D, France, but this does not alter the authors adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MS CML JL MA RLS PSA LBP. Performed the experiments: MS JL KS TC. Analyzed the data: MS JL KS TC PSA LBP. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AP SV JNJ CM AvB SS FL ARL. Wrote the paper: MS CML JL PSA LBP.