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Journal of Bacteriology, May 2000, p. 2393-2401, Vol. 182, No. 9
Department of Bacteriology of the Research
Laboratory for Infectious Disease,1 and
Diagnostic Laboratory for Infectious Diseases and Perinatal
Screening,2 National Institute of Public Health
and the Environment, 3720 BA Bilthoven, and Veterinary
Faculty, Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Department of
Bacteriology, 3508 TD Utrecht,3 The Netherlands
Received 12 November 1999/Accepted 26 January 2000
The direct repeat region in Mycobacterium tuberculosis
complex strains is composed of multiple direct variant repeats (DVRs), each of which is composed of a 36-bp direct repeat (DR) plus a nonrepetitive spacer sequence of similar size. It has been shown previously that clinical isolates show extensive polymorphism in the DR
region by the variable presence of DVRs, and this polymorphism has been
used in the epidemiology of tuberculosis. In an attempt to better
understand the evolutionary scenario leading to polymorphic DR loci and
to improve strain differentiation by spoligotyping, we characterized
and compared the DNA sequences of the complete DR region and its
flanking DNA of M. tuberculosis complex strains. We
identified 94 different spacer sequences among 26 M. tuberculosis complex strains. No sequence homology was found
between any of these spacers and M. tuberculosis DNA
outside of the DR region or with any other known bacterial
sequence. Although strains differed extensively in the presence or
absence of DVRs, the order of the spacers in the DR locus was found to
be well conserved. The data strongly suggest that the polymorphism in
clinical isolates is the result of successive deletions of single
discrete DVRs or of multiple contiguous DVRs from a primordial DR
region containing many more DVRs than seen in present day isolates and
that virtually no scrambling of DVRs took place during evolution.
Because the majority of the novel spacer sequences identified in this
study were confined to isolates of the rare Mycobacterium
canettii taxon, the use of the novel spacers in spoligotyping led
only to a slight improvement of strain differentiation by spoligotyping.
0021-9193/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Genetic Variation and Evolutionary Origin of the Direct
Repeat Locus of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex
Bacteria
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Bacteriology of the Research Laboratory for Infectious Disease,
National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, P.O. Box 1, 3720 BA Bilthoven, The Netherlands. Phone: 31-30-2742113. Fax:
31-30-2744449. E-mail: JDA.van.Embden{at}rivm.nl.
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