The National Culture Collection of Pathogens (NCCP) is a
microbial resource bank in Korea that collects pathogen resources
causing infectious disease in human and distributes
them for research and education. The NCCP bank attempts
to discover strains with various characteristics and specific
purposes to provide diverse resources to researchers. Staphylococcus
aureus American Type Culture Collection (ATCC)
6538P is used as a reference strain in the microbial assay for
antibiotics in the Korean and in the United States Pharmacopoeias.
We aimed to analyze domestically isolated microbial
resources from the NCCP to replace the S. aureus reference
strain. Staphylococcus aureus strains were identified using matrix-
assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass
spectrometry and the VITEK-2 system and characterized by
multilocus sequence typing, 16S rRNA sequencing, and antibiotic
susceptibility testing. Several candidate strains had similar
characteristics as the reference strain. Among them, the
nucleotide sequence of the 16S rRNA region of NCCP 16830
was 100% identical to that of the reference strain; it was sensitive
to six types of antibiotics and showed results most similar
to the reference strain. A validity evaluation was conducted
using the cylinder-plate method. NCCP 16830 presented
valid results and had the same performance as ATCC
6538P; therefore, it was selected as an alternative candidate
strain.