Mycobacterium microti: More diverse than previously thought

Smith, NH, Crawshaw, T, Parry, J and Birtles, RJ ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4216-5044 2009, 'Mycobacterium microti: More diverse than previously thought' , Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 47 (8) , pp. 2551-2559.

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Abstract

Mycobacterium microti is a member of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex of bacteria. This species was originally identified as a pathogen of small rodents and shrews and was associated with limited diversity and a much reduced spoligotype pattern. More recently, specific deletions of chromosomal DNA have been shown to define this group of organisms, which can be identified by the absence of chromosomal region RD1mic. We describe here the molecular characteristics of 141 strains of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolated in Great Britain over a 14-year period. All strains have characteristic loss of some spoligotype spacers and characteristic alleles at the ETR-E and ETR-F variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR) loci, and a sample of these strains was deleted for regions RD7, RD9, and RD1micbut intact for regions RD4 and RD12. We therefore identified these strains as M. microti and show that they have much more diverse spoligotype patterns and VNTR types than previously thought. The most common source of these strains was domestic cats, and we show that the molecular types of M. microti are geographically localized in the same way that molecular types of Mycobacterium bovis are geographically localized in cattle in the United Kingdom. We describe the pathology of M. microti infection in cats and suggest that the feline disease is a spillover from a disease maintained in an unknown wild mammal, probably field voles. The location of the cats with M. microti infection suggests that they do not overlap geographically with the strains of Mycobacterium bovis in Great Britain

Item Type:	Article
Schools:	Schools > School of Environment and Life Sciences
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Clinical Microbiology
Publisher:	American Society for Microbiology
Refereed:	Yes
ISSN:	0095-1137
Related URLs:	Publication
Funders:	Funder not known
Depositing User:	Institutional Repository
Date Deposited:	06 Nov 2014 00:19
Last Modified:	15 Feb 2022 18:37
URI:	https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/32315

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