Molecular epidemiology and intercontinental spread of cholera.

Whole genome sequence analysis has revealed the phylogenetic structure of Vibrio cholerae and has shown that the current seventh pandemic is highly clonal, emerging from a single source. Such analysis has the potential to become a powerful public health tool as we build public sequence databases, and as the speed of sequencing and analysis increases. Examples of such studies, as applied to different settings of the disease cholera, are described and discussed.