Mycobacterium abscessus, a taxonomic puzzle

Adekambi et al. questioned our data produced, performing the wet lab DDH test with five replicates [11]. Instead they proposed results (Table 2 of [10]) inferred from rpoB similarity using the above mentioned formula. In our view, it is not valid to replace a complex assay that takes into account the whole genome (which is still considered the gold standard), with a formula based on just a single gene. Bioinformatic algorithms are available and validated in multiple studies, which can be used to infer the DDH from genomic data. The best known, in addition to Average Nucleotide Identity (ANI) [12], are the Genome to Genome Distance (GGD) [13, 14] and the Genomic Signature-Delta Difference (GS-DD) [15].