ArticlePLoS biology2008
High functional diversity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis driven by genetic drift and human demography.
Article in PLoS biology, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 296 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
296 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Variation in Mycobacterium tuberculosis population structure in Iran: a systemic review and meta-analysis.BMC infectious diseases · 2021Pooled it
- Molecular epidemiology of M. tuberculosis in Ethiopia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Tuberculosis (Edinburgh, Scotland) · 2019Pooled it
- Global variation in bacterial strains that cause tuberculosis disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2018Pooled it
- Do HLA class II genes protect against pulmonary tuberculosis? A systematic review and meta-analysis.European journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases : official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology · 2016Pooled it
- The role of host genetic factors in respiratory tract infectious diseases: systematic review, meta-analyses and field synopsis.Scientific reports · 2015Pooled it
- Sequence-encoded determinants of regional mutational plasticity: comparative analysis of PE_PGRS genes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other bacteria.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Dormancy regulon reduction was pivotal to the evolution of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Recurrent gene conversions and subcluster-specific variants are associated withFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Canonical fact versus hypothesis testing to decipher transmission of non-tuberculous and tuberculous mycobacteria: a comparative review.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- Molecular Epidemiology ofMicroorganisms · 2025Review
- TheeLife · 2025Article
- Ecology, global diversity and evolutionary mechanisms in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2025Review
- Loss of theScience advances · 2025Article
- Immunoinformatics Predictions on VariableMicroorganisms · 2025Article
- Interred mechanisms of resistance and host immune evasion revealed through network-connectivity analysis ofmSystems · 2025Article
- Type VII secretion system gene mutations driving global mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission revealed by whole genomic sequence.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Article
- Differential rates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission associate with host-pathogen sympatry.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Bacterial diversity dominates variable macrophage responses of tuberculosis patients in Tanzania.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Evolution and emergence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2024Review
- Parallel signatures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and human Y-chromosome phylogeography support the Two Layer model of East Asian population history.Communications biology · 2023Article
236 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Mycobacterium tuberculosis infects one third of the human world population and kills someone every 15 seconds. For more than a century, scientists and clinicians have been distinguishing between the human- and animal-adapted members of the M. tuberculosis complex (MTBC). However, all human-adapted strains of MTBC have traditionally been considered to be essentially identical. We surveyed sequence diversity within a global collection of strains belonging to MTBC using seven megabase pairs of DNA sequence data. We show that the members of MTBC affecting humans are more genetically diverse than generally assumed, and that this diversity can be linked to human demographic and migratory events. We further demonstrate that these organisms are under extremely reduced purifying selection and that, as a result of increased genetic drift, much of this genetic diversity is likely to have functional consequences. Our findings suggest that the current increases in human population, urbanization, and global travel, combined with the population genetic characteristics of M. tuberculosis described here, could contribute to the emergence and spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.