title: On the origin of leprosy.
abstract: Leprosy, a chronic human disease with potentially debilitating neurological consequences, results from infection with Mycobacterium leprae. This unculturable pathogen has undergone extensive reductive evolution, with half of its genome now occupied by pseudogenes. Using comparative genomics, we demonstrated that all extant cases of leprosy are attributable to a single clone whose dissemination worldwide can be retraced from analysis of very rare single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The disease seems to have originated in Eastern Africa or the Near East and spread with successive human migrations. Europeans or North Africans introduced leprosy into West Africa and the Americas within the past 500 years.
authors.affiliation: Unité de Génétique Moléculaire Bactérienne, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Monot
authors.forename: Nadine
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Honoré
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Garnier
authors.forename: Romulo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Araoz
authors.forename: Jean-Yves
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Coppée
authors.forename: Céline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lacroix
authors.forename: Samba
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sow
authors.forename: John S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Spencer
authors.forename: Richard W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Truman
authors.forename: Diana L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gelber
authors.forename: Marcos
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Virmond
authors.forename: Béatrice
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Flageul
authors.forename: Sang-Nae
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Baohong
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ji
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Paniz-Mondolfi
authors.forename: Jacinto
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Convit
authors.forename: Saroj
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: Paul E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Fine
authors.forename: Voahangy
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Rasolofo
authors.forename: Patrick J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Brennan
authors.forename: Stewart T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Cole
mesh_terms: D000349:Africa / Q000453:epidemiology; D000569:Americas / Q000453:epidemiology; D001208:Asia / Q000453:epidemiology; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D020071:Interspersed Repetitive Sequences; D007918:Leprosy / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000266:history* / Q000382:microbiology / Q000635:transmission; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats; D009166:Mycobacterium leprae / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011544:Pseudogenes; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA