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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, December 2000, p. 4535-4538, Vol. 38, No. 12
0095-1137/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Variable Numbers of TTC Repeats in Mycobacterium leprae DNA from Leprosy Patients and Use in Strain Differentiation

Yoo-Chul Shin,1 Hyejon Lee,1 Hyeyoung Lee,1 Gerald P. Walsh,2 Joo-Deuk Kim,1,3 and Sang-Nae Cho1,3,*

Institute for Immunology and Immunological Diseases1 and Department of Microbiology,3 Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul 120-752, Republic of Korea, and Leonard Wood Memorial Center,2 Cebu 6000, Philippines

Received 19 June 2000/Returned for modification 26 July 2000/Accepted 29 September 2000

Strain differentiation of Mycobacterium leprae would be of great value for epidemiological investigation to identify the infectious sources of leprosy, to understand transmission patterns, and to distinguish between relapse and reinfection. From the M. leprae genome sequence database, TTC DNA repeats were identified. Primer sets designed to amplify the region flanking TTC repeats revealed PCR products of different sizes, indicating that the number of repeats at each locus may be variable among M. leprae strains. The TTC repeats were not found in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mycobacterium avium, Mycobacterium marinum, or human tissues, which indicated their specificity to M. leprae. Sequence analysis of the TTC repeat region in each of the M. leprae strains showed a variation of 10 to 37 repeats. In the M. leprae strains of 34 multibacillary patients at Cebu, Philippines, M. leprae with 24 and 25 TTC repeats was most common, and this was followed by strains with 14, 15, 20, 21, and 28 repeats. This study thus indicates that there are variable numbers of TTC repeats in a noncoding region of M. leprae strains and that the TTC region may be useful for strain differentiation for epidemiological investigations of leprosy.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 134 Shinchon-dong, Seoul 120-752, Republic of Korea. Phone: 822-361-5282. Fax: 822-392-7088. E-mail: raycho{at}yumc.yonsei.ac.kr.

Journal of Clinical Microbiology, December 2000, p. 4535-4538, Vol. 38, No. 12
0095-1137/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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