Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Molecular Immunology, Basel, Switzerland.
Infect Genet Evol. 2012 Apr;12(3):522-9. doi: 10.1016/j.meegid.2012.01.018. Epub 2012 Jan 28.
Mycobacterium ulcerans (M. ulcerans) causes a devastating infection of the skin and underlying tissue commonly known as Buruli ulcer (BU). Genetic analyses indicate that M. ulcerans has a common ancestor with Mycobacterium marinum (M. marinum) and has diverged from this fish and human pathogen perhaps around a million years ago. M. ulcerans is characterized by minimal genetic diversity and since it has a highly clonal population structure, genetic differences between individual isolates reflect changes that have occurred sequentially from their respective progenitors. This feature, which is shared by other bacterial pathogens with low sequence diversity, such as Yersinia pestis and Bordetella pertussis renders M. ulcerans a promising model to reveal evolutionary mechanisms. Until today transmission pathways and environmental reservoirs of M. ulcerans are not entirely explored. However, comparative genome analysis of closely related M. ulcerans isolates is anticipated to give deeper insights into the population structure of this enigmatic mycobacterium.
溃疡分枝杆菌（M. ulcerans）可引起皮肤和皮下组织的破坏性感染，通常被称为布鲁里溃疡（BU）。基因分析表明，溃疡分枝杆菌与海分枝杆菌（M. marinum）有共同的祖先，并且可能在大约一百万年前从这种鱼类和人类病原体中分化出来。溃疡分枝杆菌的遗传多样性极小，由于其具有高度克隆的种群结构，因此个体分离株之间的遗传差异反映了从各自祖先依次发生的变化。这种特征与其他具有低序列多样性的细菌病原体（如鼠疫耶尔森菌和百日咳博德特氏菌）共享，使溃疡分枝杆菌成为揭示进化机制的有前途的模型。直到今天，溃疡分枝杆菌的传播途径和环境储库仍未完全探索。然而，对密切相关的溃疡分枝杆菌分离株的比较基因组分析有望更深入地了解这种神秘分枝杆菌的种群结构。
