Comparison of three molecular typing methods to assess genetic diversity for Mycobacterium tuberculosis

► MIRU-VNTR, spoligotyping and MLST were tested for M. tuberculosis. ► In this study, MLST was fully tested for this species for the first time. ► Results indicated that MLST is not a suitable method to differentiate M. tuberculosis. ► MIRU-VNTR showed better discriminatory power when compared to spoligotyping and MLST. ► A combination of MIRU-VNTR and spoligotyping provided best discriminatory power.