Abstract
The Mycobacterium genus comprises over one-hundred-and-fifty recognised species, the majority of which reside in the environment and many of which can be pathogenic to mammals. Some species of environmental mycobacteria may interfere with BCG vaccination efficacy and in tuberculin test interpretation. Examining biogeographic trends in the distribution of members of the mycobacteria across a number of physicochemical and spatial gradients in soil and water environments across Ethiopia using oligotyping identified differential distributions of pathogenic and significant species. The tuberculosis complex was identified in more than 90% of water samples and taxonomic groups implicated in lower BCG vaccine efficiency were core in both soil and water Mycobacterium communities. A reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis was identified in water, with up to 7.3×102 genome equivalents per ml. Elevation, temperature, habitat and vegetation type were important predictors of both soil and water Mycobacterium communities. These results represent the first step in understanding the potential risk of exposure to environmental mycobacteria that may undermine efforts to reduce disease incidence.
Highlights
The Mycobacterium genus contains over one hundred and fifty recognised species which can be broadly grouped into fast-growing and slow-growing species or species complexes, based upon physiological, phenotypic and phylogenetic differences [1]
Mycobacterium genus and slow-growing mycobacteria pyrosequencing primers detected a minimum of 380 sequence counts per soil and water sample after quality control
Mycobacterium riyadhense and Tuberculosis complex were dominant in water samples (Fig 1)
Summary
The Mycobacterium genus contains over one hundred and fifty recognised species which can be broadly grouped into fast-growing and slow-growing species or species complexes, based upon physiological, phenotypic and phylogenetic differences [1]. The few studies that have identified environmental or geographical hotspots are based on relatively small numbers of samples and over limited geographic ranges; often by applying decontamination cultivation techniques considered to only reveal a fraction of the true diversity [10,13,23,24,25]. To overcome these limitations ( for complex environmental microbial communities), targeted ampliconbased pyrosequencing and post-sequencing analyses can provide accurate sequence information. Oligotyping is more specific in targeting regions of conserved entropy in a multiple sequence alignment in order to separate sequences of closely related organisms during down-stream analysis [27]
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