Back to Search
Start Over
On the origin of leprosy.
- Source :
-
Science (New York, N.Y.) [Science] 2005 May 13; Vol. 308 (5724), pp. 1040-2. - Publication Year :
- 2005
-
Abstract
- 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.
- Subjects :
- Africa epidemiology
Americas epidemiology
Asia epidemiology
Biological Evolution
Europe epidemiology
Genes, Bacterial
Genome, Bacterial
History, 18th Century
History, 19th Century
History, Ancient
History, Medieval
Humans
Interspersed Repetitive Sequences
Leprosy epidemiology
Leprosy microbiology
Leprosy transmission
Minisatellite Repeats
Mycobacterium leprae classification
Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
Population Dynamics
Pseudogenes
Sequence Analysis, DNA
Emigration and Immigration
Leprosy history
Mycobacterium leprae genetics
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1095-9203
- Volume :
- 308
- Issue :
- 5724
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Science (New York, N.Y.)
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 15894530
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science/1109759