M ultilocus sequencing typing (MLST), introduced by Maiden and colleagues in 1998, has come to represent one of the most widely used and successful molecular methods for strainlevel classification of bacterial isolates (1). MLST schemes work by indexing sequence variation in a small set of housekeeping genes to a numerical classification system. Each novel sequence occurring at any of the selected loci is named as a unique numbered allele, and the profile of a given isolate is specified by the numbers representing the allelic composition. Each combination of alleles is assigned a unique sequence type (ST), and STs, in turn, can be grouped into higher levels of classification (2, 3). The ability of MLST to resolve closely related strains is limited in principle by the absolute sequence diversity present in the loci covered by the scheme and by the manner in which this sequence diversity distributes across the population to be classified. As MLST schemes require conserved PCR primer binding sites, the targets must also be sufficiently conserved so that the method works robustly, and this puts limits on the resolution of classical MLST (3). MLST schemes have now been developed for Ͼ100 genera and species, and continuously updated databases are maintained by the University of Oxford, United Kingdom (pubmlst.org), Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom (http://www.mlst.net/), and others.Classical MLST analysis, developed to be compatible with Sanger sequencing methods, is based on 400-to-500-nucleotide segments of (usually) seven genes, encompassing Ͻ0.2% of the bacterial genome in many cases (3). Advances in whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and the availability of a large number of assembled bacterial genomes have made possible new approaches to strain-and clone-level epidemiologic tracking of isolates, including the ability to apply MLST schemes on a genome-wide scale. Inference of clonal relationships from the comparison of wholegenome sequences for the purpose of epidemiologic investigations can involve a bit more subtlety than classical MLST analysis, however, and there are abundant opportunities for drawing incorrect conclusions. Perhaps the simplest of the many available approaches is that of direct-alignment-based (single nucleotide polymorphism [SNP]-based) phylogenetic analysis, often built on the underlying statistical assumptions of independent individual substitution events. Direct-alignment-based phylogenetic analyses have been used to study the population structures of bacterial outbreaks and to construct transmission maps in a variety of epidemiologic investigations (4-6). However, single recombination events, mobile genetic element insertions, or other horizontal genetic transfer events can result in multiple SNPs or more-complex rearrangements over a contiguously exchanged or interrupted region. Consequently, genome-wide direct-alignment methods, in addition to being computationally expensive, may result in the generation of incorrect tree topologies due to such rearrangements (7). Alternative...