Kao R R, Price-Carter M, Robbe-Austerman S
Rev Sci Tech. 2016 Apr;35(1):241-58. doi: 10.20506/rst.35.1.2430.
The control of any infectious disease of livestock is made more difficult by the presence of a wildlife reservoir, as the reservoir is often poorly observed and difficult to manage. This problem is particularly acute for bovine tuberculosis (bTB) because the long duration of infection and low levels of infectiousness make tracing the sources of infection difficult. For over 30 years, the process of contact tracing has been aided by the exploitation of molecular markers in the pathogen, but this has largely only been capable of characterising broad associations between large communities of similar types. However, the recent advent of mass high-throughput 'whole-genome' sequencing (WGS) has revolutionised forensic epidemiology for other diseases, and now it has the potential to do so for bTB. In this review, the authors consider the historical context of WGS use and look at what prior molecular techniques have already achieved. They outline the key approaches to interpreting WGS data and consider both the role of advanced analytical techniques that exploit the evolutionary and epidemiological properties of the system and the problems associated with quantifying the role of hidden reservoirs of disease. Finally, they consider the particular difficulties associated with developing this technology for routine diagnostics and its potential for mass use.
野生动物宿主的存在使得家畜任何传染病的控制变得更加困难，因为这种宿主往往难以监测且难以管理。对于牛结核病（bTB）而言，这个问题尤为严重，因为感染持续时间长且传染性低，使得追踪感染源变得困难。30多年来，通过利用病原体中的分子标记辅助进行接触者追踪过程，但这在很大程度上仅能够表征相似类型的大群体之间的广泛关联。然而，最近大规模高通量“全基因组”测序（WGS）的出现彻底改变了其他疾病的法医流行病学，现在它也有潜力为牛结核病做到这一点。在这篇综述中，作者们考虑了WGS使用的历史背景，并审视了先前的分子技术已经取得的成果。他们概述了解释WGS数据的关键方法，并考虑了利用该系统的进化和流行病学特性的先进分析技术的作用以及与量化疾病隐藏宿主的作用相关的问题。最后，他们考虑了将该技术用于常规诊断所面临的特殊困难及其大规模应用的潜力。
