Culture-independent detection and characterisation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and M. africanum in sputum samples using shotgun metagenomics on a benchtop sequencer.

ABSTRACT: Tuberculosis remains a major global health problem. Laboratory diagnostic methods that allow effective, early detection of cases are central to management of tuberculosis in the individual patient and in the community. Since the 1880s, laboratory diagnosis of tuberculosis has relied primarily on microscopy and culture. However, microscopy fails to provide species- or lineage-level identification and culture-based workflows for diagnosis of tuberculosis remain complex, expensive, slow, technically demanding and poorly able to handle mixed infections. We therefore explored the potential of shotgun metagenomics, sequencing of DNA from samples without culture or target-specific amplification or capture, to detect and characterise strains from the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex in smear-pos

SUBMITTER: Doughty EL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4179564 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature