title: Genetic diversity of human isolates of Mycobacterium bovis assessed by spoligotyping and Variable Number Tandem Repeat genotyping.
abstract: A collection of clinical isolates including 9 Mycobacterium bovis bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), 37 M. bovis and 1 isolate identified as M. bovis/caprae intermediate, recovered from humans in Tuscany, Italy, from 1990 to 2009, was genotyped by spoligotyping and Variable Number Tandem Repeat (VNTR) typing. Spoligotyping detected 15 unique profiles; the "BCG-like" SIT482/SB0120 spoligotype was largely prevalent accounting for 63.8% of isolates. VNTR typing, based on the 15 VNTR loci commonly tested for Mycobacterium tuberculosis, detected 29 unique profiles; only 8 VNTR loci (VNTR 43, MIRU 04, QUB-11b, ETR-A, VNTR 47, MIRU 31, QUB-26 and VNTR 53) provided a satisfactory allelic diversity in the VNTR analysis. Combined together, spoligotyping and VNTR typing yielded 33 unique patterns and 5 clusters including a total of 19 isolates. Clustered isolates, further typed for additional 9 VNTR loci, finally yielded 3 distinct clusters including 3 M. bovis BCG isolates each, and 1 cluster of 6 M. bovis isolates. Minimum spanning tree analysis showed that, in spite of the many distinct VNTR profiles, most M. bovis isolates displayed a high phylogenetic proximity, due to the variation of a single VNTR allele, thus indicating that the population of human M. bovis isolates in our setting is relatively homogeneous and conserved.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Patologia Sperimentale, Biotecnologie Mediche, Infettivologia ed Epidemiologia, Università di Pisa, I-56127 Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Nicoletta
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lari
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bimbi
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rindi
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tortoli
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Garzelli
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats; D009163:Mycobacterium bovis / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*