Journal article

Genomic analysis of smooth tubercle bacilli provides insights into ancestry and pathoadaptation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

P Supply, M Marceau, S Mangenot, D Roche, C Rouanet, V Khanna, L Majlessi, A Criscuolo, J Tap, A Pawlik, L Fiette, M Orgeur, M Fabre, C Parmentier, W Frigui, R Simeone, EC Boritsch, AS Debrie, E Willery, D Walker Show all

Nature Genetics | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2013

Abstract

Global spread and limited genetic variation are hallmarks of M. tuberculosis, the agent of human tuberculosis. In contrast, Mycobacterium canettii and related tubercle bacilli that also cause human tuberculosis and exhibit unusual smooth colony morphology are restricted to East Africa. Here, we sequenced and analyzed the whole genomes of five representative strains of smooth tubercle bacilli (STB) using Sanger (4-5× coverage), 454/Roche (13-18× coverage) and/or Illumina DNA sequencing (45-105× coverage). We show that STB isolates are highly recombinogenic and evolutionarily early branching, with larger genome sizes, higher rates of genetic variation, fewer molecular scars and distinct CRISPR..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by European Commission


Funding Acknowledgements

We are grateful to S. Cole for help in initiating the M. canettii CIPT 140010059 genome sequencing project and advice, to H. Dong, T. Gamier, N. Honore, M. Huerre, A. Kapopoulou and M. Monot for help and fruitful discussions and to Z. Rouy for help with sequence depositing. The work was supported in part by the Institut Pasteur (PTR 314 and PTR 383), European Community's Framework Programme 7 grant 260872, Wellcome Trust grant 098051 and Genoscope collaborative grant 114.