Open AccessGenomic Analysis of a Mycobacterium Bovis Bacillus Calmette-Guérin Strain Isolated from an Adult Patient with Pulmonary Tuberculosis
Author(s) -
Xuming Li,
Liping Chen,
Yaping Zhu,
Xia Yu,
Jun Cao,
Rui Wang,
Xinyan Lv,
Jin He,
Aizhen Guo,
Hairong Huang,
Huajun Zheng,
Siguo Liu
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0122403
Subject(s) - virulence , mycobacterium tuberculosis , mycobacterium bovis , tuberculosis , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , bcg vaccine , vaccination , virology , insertion sequence , tandem repeat , attenuated vaccine , genetics , gene , medicine , genome , transposable element , pathology
For years, bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) has served as the unique vaccine against tuberculosis and has generally been regarded as safe. However, a clinical strain labeled 3281 that was isolated from a TB patient was identified to be BCG. Via the combination of next-generation sequencing (NGS) and comparative genomic analysis, unique 3281 genetic characteristics were revealed. A region containing the dnaA and dnaN genes that is closely related to the initial chromosome replication was found to repeat three times on the BCG Pasteur-specific tandem duplication region DU1. Due to the minimum number of epitopes in BCG strains, 3281 was inferred to have a high possibility for immune evasion. Additionally, variations in the virulence genes and predictions for potential virulence factors were analyzed. Overall, we report a pathogen that has never previously been thought to be pathogenic and initial insights that are focused on the genetic characteristics of virulent BCG.