One approach to microbial genotyping is to make use of sets of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in combination with binary markers. Here we report the modification and automation of a SNP-plus-binarymarker-based approach to the genotyping of Staphylococcus aureus and its application to 391 S. aureus isolates from southeast Queensland, Australia. The SNPs used were arcC210, tpi243, arcC162, gmk318, pta294, tpi36, tpi241, and pta383. These provide a Simpson's index of diversity (D) of 0.95 with respect to the S. aureus multilocus sequence typing database and define 61 genotypes and the major clonal complexes. The binary markers used were pvl, cna, sdrE, pT181, and pUB110. Two novel real-time PCR formats for interrogating these markers were compared. One of these makes use of "light upon extension" (LUX) primers and biplexed reactions, while the other is a streamlined modification of kinetic PCR using SYBR green. The latter format proved to be more robust. In addition, automated methods for DNA template preparation, reaction setup, and data analysis were developed. A single SNP-based method for ST-93 (Queensland clone) identification was also devised. The genotyping revealed the numerical importance of the "South West Pacific" and "Queensland" community-acquired methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) clones and the clonal complex 239 "Aus-1/Aus-2" hospital-associated MRSA. There was a strong association between the community-acquired clones and pvl.Bacterial genotyping is a field in which there is continuous technological innovation. Many methods have been described, with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, amplified fragment length polymorphism, multilocus sequence typing (MLST), and variable number tandem repeat analysis currently being used widely. In general, the whole-genome/electrophoresis-based methods such as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and amplified fragment length polymorphism give very high resolution (13,29) and are used for establishing epidemiological linkages in short time scales, MLST is used for research into large scale population structures (3, 4), while variable number tandem repeat analysis is showing some promise at being amenable to both classes of application (7,14).We have devised a systematic approach to the development of new bacterial genotyping methods. The central hypothesis is that, given a defined data set of genetic diversity within a bacterial species, an appropriate means of analyzing those data, and a numerical description of the required resolving power of a genotyping method, it is in principal always possible to identify a set of polymorphic sites that, if interrogated, will provide the required resolving power in an efficient manner. Robertson et al. (25) described the "Minimum SNPs" software that can derive highly informative sets of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from DNA sequence alignments and the application of this to the development of SNP-based genotyping methods for Neisseria meningitidis and Staphylococcus aureus. The SNPs used were derived from ML...