Over the past decade, much research effort has been invested in the genomics and epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, one of the world’s deadliest diseases. Currently, scientific and political initiatives aim to improve the situation.
Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be a global threat to human health. Developments in molecular typing techniques have provided an opportunity to study the geographic and evolutionary relationships of strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based typing of M. tuberculosis has helped to establish a central
database linking genotypes and epidemiological data, resulting in a better understanding of factors that influence TB transmission and the evaluation of control programmes.
Typing based on the variable number of tandem repeats (VNTRs) of mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units (MIRUs) in M. tuberculosis is an established PCR-based technique. While the standard 12 MIRU-VNTR loci technique has been used in the USA and Europe, an alternative set of 15 MIRU-VNTR loci (including 12 MIRU loci: 2, 4, 10, 16, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 39 and 40, plus three exact tandem repeat [ETR] loci: A, B and C) is used commonly in the UK for routine epidemiological discrimination of M. tuberculosis isolates. Application of the 15 MIRU-VNTR loci typing technique to a large number of isolates has identified several large clusters of M. tuberculosis strains with profiles that are indistinguishable, but have no known epidemiological links.
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