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The application of genotyping techniques for subtyping uropathogenic Escherichia coli has contributed to better understanding of the epidemiology of community-acquired urinary tract infection (UTI). However, the current techniques are hampered by limited reproducibility, poor discriminatory power, labour-intensive performance or high cost. A screening test that is sequence-based would provide an inexpensive, reproducible way to subtype E. coli isolates. Such a test, if also discriminatory, would be highly useful for epidemiological studies. The discriminatory ability of 12 putative virulence genes (fimH, fliD, fliM, iha, motA, papA/H, kpsMTII, fepE, fimA, flgA, malG, purD) was evaluated based on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in nine uropathogenic E. coli isolates, all previously found to belong to a single multilocus sequence type (MLST) complex (ST69). An additional 25 epidemiologically well …