Leprosy, a chronic human disease with potentially debilitating neurological consequences, results from infection with Mycobacterium leprae. This unculturable pathogen has undergone extensive reductive evolution, with half of its genome now occupied by pseudogenes. Using comparative genomics, we demonstrated that all extant cases of leprosy are attributable to a single clone whose dissemination worldwide can be retraced from analysis of very rare single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The disease seems to have originated in Eastern Africa or the Near East and spread with successive human migrations. Europeans or North Africans introduced leprosy into West Africa and the Americas within the past 500 years.
Type
research article
PubMed ID
15894530
Authors
Monot, Marc
•
Honoré, Nadine
•
Garnier, Thierry
•
Araoz, Romulo
•
Coppée, Jean-Yves
•
Lacroix, Céline
•
Sow, Samba
•
Spencer, John S
•
Truman, Richard W
•
Williams, Diana L
Publication date
2005
Published in
Volume
308
Issue
5724
Start page
1040
End page
2
Subjects
Peer reviewed
REVIEWED
Written at
OTHER
EPFL units
Available on Infoscience
September 7, 2010
Use this identifier to reference this record