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Human host range of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Nature Genetics volume 48, pages 1453–1454 (2016)Cite this article

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A new study demonstrates that the most widespread lineage of the causative agent of tuberculosis consists of both globally distributed and geographically restricted sublineages. The geographically restricted sublineages are likely able to infect only specific human populations, whereas the globally distributed ones likely have a broader human host range.

Tuberculosis (TB) poses a major worldwide threat to human health. As a result of the acquisition of antibiotic resistance, this threat has been sharply increasing, with the possibility that TB may soon become entirely non-treatable using currently available antibiotics1. The causative agent of TB is the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), a group of bacterial strains characterized by a near absence of recombination and relatively low levels of sequence diversity2. Despite this relatively low diversity, different MTBC strains can display pronounced phenotypic variation, including differences in their host ranges3,4. The MTBC consists of seven human-adapted lineages and two lineages adapted to various wild and domesticated animals4. Lineages 2 and 4 are the most geographically widespread of all human MTBC lineages, with lineage 4 found on all inhabited continents5.

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Figure 1: Examples of the distributions of a globally distributed MTBC lineage 4 sublineage (L4.3/LAM) and a geographically restricted sublineage (L4.6.1/Uganda).

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  1. Department of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Ruth Hershberg is in the Rachel and Menachem Mendelovitch Evolutionary Processes of Mutation and Natural Selection Research Laboratory, Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.,

    Ruth Hershberg

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  1. Ruth Hershberg
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Correspondence to Ruth Hershberg.

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Hershberg, R. Human host range of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Nat Genet 48, 1453–1454 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3724

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