Evolutionary bottlenecks in the agents of tuberculosis, leprosy, and paratuberculosis.
Published
Journal Article
Parasitic mycobacteria cause important human and animal diseases including tuberculosis, leprosy, and paratuberculosis. Several methods demonstrate a high degree of sequence conservation in three parasitic mycobacterial species (Mycobacterium tuberculosis, M. leprae, and M. avium subspecies paratuberculosis). Each of these species has completely conserved deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence in an internal transcribed spacer. In contrast, several species of environmental mycobacteria (M. intracellulare, M. kansasii, M. gordonae, and M. scrofulaceum) have substantial strain-to-strain variation in this region. These data suggest that each of the parasitic species has gone through a recent evolutionary bottleneck. Comparisons of tandem-repeat DNA from ancient and modern mycobacterial strains may allow this hypothesis to be tested directly.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Frothingham, R
Published Date
- February 1999
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 52 / 2
Start / End Page
- 95 - 99
PubMed ID
- 10340288
Pubmed Central ID
- 10340288
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0306-9877
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1054/mehy.1997.0622
Language
- eng
Conference Location
- United States