Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011 Jul;11(5):1164-7.
doi: 10.1016/j.meegid.2011.02.002. Epub 2011 Feb 18.

How dormant is Mycobacterium tuberculosis during latency? A study integrating genomics and molecular epidemiology

Zhenhua Yang  1 , Mariana Rosenthal, Noah A Rosenberg, Sarah Talarico, Lixin Zhang, Carl Marrs, Vibeke Østergaard Thomsen, Troels Lillebaek, Aase B Andersen
Affiliations

How dormant is Mycobacterium tuberculosis during latency? A study integrating genomics and molecular epidemiology

Zhenhua Yang et al. Infect Genet Evol. 2011 Jul.

Abstract

Mycobacterium tuberculosis may survive for decades in the human body in a state termed latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI). We investigated the occurrence during LTBI of insertion/deletion events in a selected set of mononucleotide simple sequence repeats, DNA sequence changes in four M. tuberculosis genes, and large sequence variations in 4750 M. tuberculosis open reading frames. We studied 13 paired M. tuberculosis clinical isolates, with each pair representing a reactivation of LTBI more than three decades after primary infection. Absence of sequence variations between paired isolates in nearly all investigated loci suggests a low likelihood of bacterial replication during LTBI.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Cole ST, Brosch R, Parkhill J, et al. Deciphering the biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the complete genome sequence. Nature. 1998;393:537–544. - PubMed
    1. Ellegren H. Microsatellites: simple sequences with complex evolution. Nat. Rev. Genet. 2004;5:435–445. - PubMed
    1. Gill WP, Harik NS, Whiddon MR, Liao RP, Mittler JE, Sherman DR. A replication clock for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Nat. Med. 2009;15:211–214. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hebert AM, Talarico S, Yang D, et al. DNA polymorphisms in the pepA and PPE18 genes among clinical strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis: implications for vaccine efficacy. Infect. Immun. 2007;75:5798–5805. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lillebaek T, Dirksen A, Baess I, Strunge B, Thomsen VO, Andersen AB. Molecular evidence of endogenous reactivation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis after 33 years of latent infection. J. Infect. Dis. 2002;185:401–404. - PubMed

Publication types