Journal article
Population genomics provides insights into the evolution and adaptation to humans of the waterborne pathogen Mycobacterium kansasii
T Luo, P Xu, Y Zhang, JL Porter, M Ghanem, Q Liu, Y Jiang, J Li, Q Miao, B Hu, BP Howden, JAM Fyfe, M Globan, W He, P He, Y Wang, H Liu, HE Takiff, Y Zhao, X Chen Show all
Nature Communications | NATURE PORTFOLIO | Published : 2021
Abstract
Mycobacterium kansasii can cause serious pulmonary disease. It belongs to a group of closely-related species of non-tuberculous mycobacteria known as the M. kansasii complex (MKC). Here, we report a population genomics analysis of 358 MKC isolates from worldwide water and clinical sources. We find that recombination, likely mediated by distributive conjugative transfer, has contributed to speciation and on-going diversification of the MKC. Our analyses support municipal water as a main source of MKC infections. Furthermore, nearly 80% of the MKC infections are due to closely-related M. kansasii strains, forming a main cluster that apparently originated in the 1900s and subsequently expanded ..
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Awarded by National Outstanding Youth Science Fund Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Aina Sievers and Kathy Jackson for their expert technical support. This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (81661128043 and 81871625 to Q.G., 81902107 to Q.M.), National Science and Technology Major Project of China (2017ZX10201302 and 2018ZX10715012 to Q.G., 2018ZX10103001 to Y.Z.), National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2017YFD0500301 to J.Y.), Sanming Project of Medicine in Shenzhen (SZSM201611030 to Q.G.), Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (2018JY0135 to T.L.), Non-coding RNA and Drug Discovery Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province (FB19-02 to T.L.), National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (GNT1105525 to T.P.S.), CIHR Foundation Grant (FDN-148362 to M.B.), Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology Program (No. 2019B030301009 to X.C.), Shenzhen Science and Technology Project (JCYJ20170412151620658, JCYJ20170307095303424 to X.C.)