Decay in the leprosy genome
Leprosy, which has been described since biblical times, is caused by the obligate intracellular pathogen Mycobacterium leprae. In the February 22 Nature, Cole et al. report the sequencing of the entire M. leprae genome (Nature 2001, 409:1007-1011). Pairwise comparison with the genome sequence of the closely related M. tuberculosis revealed that the M. leprae genome has undergone considerable reduction during evolution. The 3.27 megabase M. leprae genome contains less than half the number of g
Feb 21, 2001
Leprosy, which has been described since biblical times, is caused by the obligate intracellular pathogen