Characterization of a community-acquired methicillin-resistant sequence type 338 Staphylococcus aureus strain containing a staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec type V T .

•This study characterized the complete genome of an ST338 CA-MRSA strain isolated from a patient in China.•ST59 and ST338 MRSA are closely related in both phenotype and genotype, revealing a limitation of MLST in identifying similarities among isolates having different sequence types.•ST59 and ST338 MRSA may be transmitted among the communities of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.