To find the variable number of tandemrepeat ( VNTR) locus combinations that adapt to study the microevolution of Mycobacterium tuberculosis ( M. tuberculosis ) strain of Beijing genotype and the molecular markers to distinguish diff erent sublineages , VNTR and single nucleotide polymorphism( SNP) genotyping were usedto genotype 135 strains fromculture-positive sputumof tuberculosis patients ( collected and preserved by Shanghai Municipal Center f or Disease Control and Prevention) in Chongming Island , Shanghai . Based on the data, the mini mumspanning tree ( MST) was constructed . The results showed that the genotyping inf ormation of 16-locus VNTR best matched the SNP genotyping data, indicating that it was applicable in the microevolution study of M. tuberculosis strain of Beijing genotype in Chongming Island ,
Shanghai . SNP hapl otypes were mainly concentrated in ST10 ( 42. 2%) , ST19 ( 30. 4%) , and ST22 (14.1 %) . Four VNTRloci ( Mtub21 , QUB26 , MI RU16 and QUB4156) may be the molecular markers to distinguish different sublineages of Beijing genotype strains .