Rapid Identification of Lineage and Drug Resistance in Clinical Samples of .

Background: is a slow-growing bacterium, which could delay its diagnosis and, therefore, promote the spread of the disease. Whole-genome sequencing allows us to obtain the complete drug-resistance profile of the strain; however, bacterial cultivation of clinical samples, along with complex processing, is required.

Methods: In this work, we explore AmpliSeq, an amplicon-based enrichment method for preparing libraries for targeted next-generation sequencing, to identify lineage and drug resistance directly from clinical samples.

Molecular Characterization of Strains with TB-SPRINT.

We evaluated Tuberculosis-Spoligo-Rifampicin-Isoniazid Typing (TB-SPRINT), a microbead-based method for spoligotyping and detection of rifampicin and isoniazid resistance in . For that, 67 complex strains were retrospectively selected. Membrane-based spoligotyping, restriction fragment length polymorphism, DNA sequencing/pyrosequencing of , , and promoter, TB-SPRINT, and SNP typing were performed.

Multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Bangui, Central African Republic.

We investigated multidrug-resistant (MDR) Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains in Bangui, Central African Republic. We found 39.6% with the same spoligotype and synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism in the mutT1 gene.

Molecular characterisation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates in the First National Survey of Anti-tuberculosis Drug Resistance from Venezuela.

Background: Molecular typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains has become a valuable tool in the epidemiology of tuberculosis (TB) by allowing detection of outbreaks, tracking of epidemics, identification of genotypes and transmission events among patients who would have remained undetected by conventional contact investigation. This is the first genetic biodiversity study of M. tuberculosis in Venezuela.