Sofía Samper

TL;DR: The distribution of 20 variable regions resulting from insertion-deletion events in the genomes of the tubercle bacilli has been evaluated and contradict the often-presented hypothesis that M. tuberculosis, the etiological agent of human tuberculosis evolved from M. bovis, the agent of bovine disease.

TL;DR: The results suggests the existence of fine geographical genetic clines within MTC populations, that could mirror the passed and present Homo sapiens sapiens demographical and mycobacterial co-evolutionary history whose structure could be further reconstructed and modelled, thereby providing a large-scale conceptual framework of the global TB Epidemiologic Network.

TL;DR: It is shown that this lineage of mycobacterium tuberculosis strains of the Beijing lineage initially originated in the Far East, from where it radiated worldwide in several waves and detected successive increases in population size over the last 200 years.

TL;DR: The results suggest that the phoP gene is required for intracellular growth of M. tuberculosis but is not essential for persistence of the bacilli.

TL;DR: Analysis of the mut genes in 55 representative W-Beijing isolates suggests a sequential acquisition of the mutations, elucidating a plausible pathway of the molecular evolution of this clonal family.