Abstract: Cronobacter, an acute bacterial pathogen, has attracted extensive attention for causing several fatal outbreaks in neonatal intensive care units including meningitis and necrotic enterocolitis. In recent years, the diversity of the genus Cronobacter has been well described, and various detection and typing methods have been developed. The commonly used methods include biotyping, pulsed field gel electrophoresis typing and DNA sequence-based genotyping such as single locus sequencing, O-serotyping, multilocus sequence typing, single nucleotide polymorphism typing and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-cas array profiling. The 7 species of Cronobacter vary in virulence and outer membrane proteins and vesicles play a significant role in cellular pathological alterations caused by infection with Cronobacter. Sialic acid may be useful in clinical practice. To date, no consistent conclusions have been drawn regarding the virulence mechanism of Cronobacter. An array of virulence factors have been revealed by gene sequencing, but they still need further validation. The improved typing methods not only are essential for the development of Cronobacter spp. taxonomy, but also lay the foundation for exploring the virulence mechanism of Cronobacter spp..

Key words: Cronobacter, taxonomic status, typing methods, genotyping, virulence mechanism