Signatures of transmission in within-host <i>M. tuberculosis</i> variation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Because M. tuberculosis evolves slowly, transmission clusters often contain multiple individuals with identical consensus genomes, making it difficult to reconstruct transmission chains. Finding additional sources of shared M. tuberculosis variation could help overcome this problem. Previous studies have reported M. tuberculosis diversity within infected individuals; however, whether within-host variation improves transmission inferences remains unclear.

Methods

To evaluate the transmission information present in within-host M. tuberculosis variation, we re-analyzed publicly available sequence data from three household transmission studies, using household membership as a proxy for transmission linkage between donor-recipient pairs.

SUBMITTER: Walter KS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10793532 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature