RESEARCH
Infectious cousins Researchers sequenced the genome of Mycobacterium lepromatosis, a species of bacteria that causes a less-common but more-severe form of leprosy called Lucio's leprosy; the results of this sequencing were published on 23 March (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA., doi:10.1073/pnas.1421504112, 2015). Researchers have known about the relationship between M. lepromatosis and leprosy, but little was known about the relationship between this species and M. leprae, the species responsible for the majority of leprosy cases. In this study, researchers sequenced M. lepromatosis isolated from a Mexican patient, compared its genome to that of M. leprae, and found that M. leprae and M. lepromatosis evolved from a common ancestor roughly 14 million years ago. The common ancestor was probably a pathogen with a similar mode of infection to that of M. leprae and M. lepromatosis. “Our study put leprosy into a new perspective,” says Andrej Benjak, a co-author of the report, “Now that we know different species can cause leprosy, we've opened up new directions for future research.“
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