Molecular Epidemiology: Other Mycobacteria

Identification of Mycobacteria by Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization-Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

“…Most members of this genus are harmless microbes that live in diverse soil and aqueous environments; however, there are a number of pathogenic species that infect humans and animals (25,42). The number of infections caused by mycobacteria has increased over the past few decades (2,5,10,16,44). The two most well-known human pathogens are Mycobacterium tuberculosis and M. leprae.…”

“…These include restriction fragment length polymorphism of the IS6110 repetitive sequence (36) and spacer oligotyping (spoligotyping) to look at genetic loci which contain a variable number of tandem repeats (42). For the other mycobacterial species, restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis are the most widely used typing techniques, providing different levels of discrimination (10,13,26,44,45). In addition, multilocus enzyme electrophoresis has been used to subtype isolates of MAC and rapidly growing mycobacteria (RGM) (11,46).…”