On the Origin of Leprosy

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 demo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2005-05, Vol.308 (5724), p.1040-1042
Main 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, Gelber, Robert, Virmond, Marcos, Flageul, Béatrice, Cho, Sang-Nae, Ji, Baohong, Paniz-Mondolfi, Alberto, Convit, Jacinto, Young, Saroj, Fine, Paul E, Rasolofo, Voahangy, Brennan, Patrick J, Cole, Stewart T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Africa
Africa - epidemiology
Americas
Americas - epidemiology
Armadillos
Asia
Asia - epidemiology
Bacterial diseases
Bacteriology
Biochemistry, Molecular Biology
Biological and medical sciences
Biological Evolution
Coding
Comparative analysis
Demography
Emigration and Immigration
Europe
Europe - epidemiology
Evolution
Genes, Bacterial
Genetic aspects
Genome, Bacterial
Genomes
Genomics
Geographic regions
History, 18th Century
History, 19th Century
History, Ancient
History, Medieval
Human bacterial diseases
Human populations
Humans
Infectious diseases
Interspersed Repetitive Sequences
Leprosy
Leprosy - epidemiology
Leprosy - history
Leprosy - microbiology
Leprosy - transmission
Life Sciences
Medical sciences
Minisatellite Repeats
Molecular biology
Mycobacterium leprae
Mycobacterium leprae - classification
Mycobacterium leprae - genetics
Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis
Pathogens
Pathology
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
Population Dynamics
Pseudogenes
Sequence Analysis, DNA
Topology
Tropical bacterial diseases
Tuberculosis
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Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science/1109759