title: Evolutionary bottlenecks in the agents of tuberculosis, leprosy, and paratuberculosis.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Infectious Disease Section, Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27705, USA. rfr@galactose.mc.duke.edu
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Frothingham
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D016927:Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity; D009166:Mycobacterium leprae / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity; D010802:Phylogeny; D020080:Tandem Repeat Sequences
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial