Global Health Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 19, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Future Microbiol. 2011 Jan;6(1):57-71. doi: 10.2217/fmb.10.153.
Leprosy, which has afflicted human populations for millenia, results from infection with Mycobacterium leprae, an unculturable pathogen with an exceptionally long generation time. Considerable insight into the biology and drug resistance of the leprosy bacillus has been obtained from genomics. M. leprae has undergone reductive evolution and pseudogenes now occupy half of its genome. Comparative genomics of four different strains revealed remarkable conservation of the genome (99.995% identity) yet uncovered 215 polymorphic sites, mainly single nucleotide polymorphisms, and a handful of new pseudogenes. Mapping these polymorphisms in a large panel of strains defined 16 single nucleotide polymorphism-subtypes that showed strong geographical associations and helped retrace the evolution of M. leprae.
麻风病是一种影响人类数千年的疾病,它是由麻风分枝杆菌(Mycobacterium leprae)感染引起的,麻风分枝杆菌是一种无法培养的病原体,其世代时间非常长。基因组学为我们深入了解麻风杆菌的生物学和耐药性提供了大量信息。麻风分枝杆菌经历了还原进化,现在假基因占据了其基因组的一半。对四种不同菌株的比较基因组学研究表明,基因组具有惊人的保守性(99.995%的同一性),但发现了 215 个多态性位点,主要是单核苷酸多态性,还有少数新的假基因。在一个大型菌株面板中对这些多态性进行映射,确定了 16 种单核苷酸多态性亚型,这些亚型表现出强烈的地理相关性,并有助于追溯麻风分枝杆菌的进化。