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Journal of Bacteriology, September 2001, p. 5279-5284, Vol. 183, No. 18
Public Health Laboratory Services Mycobacteria Reference
Unit and Department of Infection, Guy's, King's and St. Thomas'
School of Medicine, London,1 Department
of Medical Microbiology, University of Aberdeen,
Aberdeen,2 and Scottish Mycobacteria
Reference Laboratory, The City Hospital,
Edinburgh,3 United Kingdom, and
Department of Microbiology, Mahidol University, Bangkok,
Thailand4
Received 2 August 2000/Accepted 15 June 2001
Several characteristics of Mycobacterium
tuberculosis (e.g., conserved genome and low growth rate) have
severely restricted the study of the microorganism. The discovery of
IS6110 raised hopes of overcoming these obstacles.
However, our knowledge of this IS element is relatively limited; even
its two basic characteristics (transposition mechanism and target site
selection) are far from well understood. In this study,
IS6110 insertions in ipl loci (iplA and iplB) in two collections
of clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis from different
geographic locations, one from Scotland and the other from Thailand,
were investigated. Five different IS6110 insertions in
the loci were identified:
ipl-4::IS6110, ipl-5::IS6110,
ipl-11::IS6110,
ipl-12::IS6110, and
ipl-13::IS6110. An attempt to
establish the phylogenetic relationship of the isolates containing
these insertions was unsuccessful, suggesting that some of these
insertions may have arisen from more than one event. This possibility
is further supported by the observation that IS6110
copies existed in the same site but with different orientations in
different isolates, and the insertion site of
ipl-1::IS6110 harbored
IS6110 copies in both iplA and
iplB in different strains. All these suggest the
independent occurrence of IS6110 insertions at the same
sites of the genome of M. tuberculosis in different clinical isolates. The implications of this finding are discussed.
0021-9193/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.183.18.5279-5284.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Molecular Evidence for Independent Occurrence of
IS6110 Insertions at the Same Sites of the Genome of
Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Different
Clinical Isolates
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Public Health
Laboratory Services Mycobacteria Reference Unit and Department of
Infection, Guy's, King's & St. Thomas' School of Medicine, London
SE22 8QF, United Kingdom. Phone: 44 20 8693 1312. Fax: 44 20 7346 6477. E-mail: z.fang{at}hgmp.mrc.ac.uk.
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