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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, August 2009, p. 2551-2559, Vol. 47, No. 8
0095-1137/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JCM.00638-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Mycobacterium microti: More Diverse than Previously Thought{triangledown}

N. H. Smith,1,2* T. Crawshaw,3 J. Parry,1 and R. J. Birtles4

VLA Weybridge, New Haw, Surrey KT15 3NB, United Kingdom,1 Centre for the Study of Evolution, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QL, United Kingdom,2 VLA Starcross, Staplake Mount, Starcross, Exeter EX6 8PE, United Kingdom,3 Disease Ecology Group, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Liverpool, CH64 7TE, United Kingdom4

Received 30 March 2009/ Returned for modification 22 May 2009/ Accepted 8 June 2009

Mycobacterium microti is a member of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex of bacteria. This species was originally identified as a pathogen of small rodents and shrews and was associated with limited diversity and a much reduced spoligotype pattern. More recently, specific deletions of chromosomal DNA have been shown to define this group of organisms, which can be identified by the absence of chromosomal region RD1mic. We describe here the molecular characteristics of 141 strains of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolated in Great Britain over a 14-year period. All strains have characteristic loss of some spoligotype spacers and characteristic alleles at the ETR-E and ETR-F variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR) loci, and a sample of these strains was deleted for regions RD7, RD9, and RD1mic but intact for regions RD4 and RD12. We therefore identified these strains as M. microti and show that they have much more diverse spoligotype patterns and VNTR types than previously thought. The most common source of these strains was domestic cats, and we show that the molecular types of M. microti are geographically localized in the same way that molecular types of Mycobacterium bovis are geographically localized in cattle in the United Kingdom. We describe the pathology of M. microti infection in cats and suggest that the feline disease is a spillover from a disease maintained in an unknown wild mammal, probably field voles. The location of the cats with M. microti infection suggests that they do not overlap geographically with the strains of Mycobacterium bovis in Great Britain.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: VLA Weybridge, New Haw, Surrey KT15 3NB, United Kingdom. Phone: (44) 1273 873502. Fax: (44) 1932 347046. E-mail: Noel{at}Sussex.ac.uk

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 17 June 2009.

Journal of Clinical Microbiology, August 2009, p. 2551-2559, Vol. 47, No. 8
0095-1137/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JCM.00638-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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