how to determine the serotype of a pathogen? - (Mar/06/2013 )

how to determine how many serotypes for a pathogen? What is the experimental methods.

Look at a range of serums from people with the disease and see how many of them cross-react with different strains of the disease...

still do not understand. I still do not know how to do the serotyping of a pathogen.

if a pathogen only has one serotype, and if the disease caused by the pathogen can happen both in human and animal, can I say there may be a possibility of cross infection between human and animal ?

Essentially the serotype of a disease is a variation in the cell surface proteins which cause immunological reactions in the infected person. You can group different subspecies of organism together based on the serotype.

For a good clear example, look up Lancefield grouping.

If an organism causes infection in both humans and other animals, then of course there is potential for cross infection, but this has nothing to do with the serovar.