Paul Jeffrey Freidlin
National Mycobacterium Reference Laboratory, National Public Health Laboratory, Ministry of Health,
Tel-Aviv
Israel
Research Article
A New Paradigm for Genus Mycobacterium Population Structure
Author(s): Paul Jeffrey FreidlinPaul Jeffrey Freidlin
The genus Mycobacterium contains the pathogenic species tuberculosis and leprae, and additionally at least 148 sometimes opportunistic pathogenic species that occupy environmental niches. The genus Mycobacterium is in the order Actinomycetes along with other acid-fast genera with mycolic acids in their cell walls, such as Corynebacterium, Nocardia, and Rhodococcus. The DNA-dependent RNA polymerase subunit b gene rpoB, is relatively conserved among these bacteria. Sequence polymorphism in a 342bp fragment of rpoB is sufficient to differentiate among most species of Mycobacterium. However, construction of a robust and testable phylogeny or population structure based on this polymorphism, or polymorphism in other genomic regions, has remained elusive. This study presents a new paradigm for the resolution of genus Mycobacterium population structure. A minimum spanning tree (MST) was const.. View More»
DOI:
10.4172/2155-9597.1000169