Comprehensive Phylogenetic Analysis of Mycobacteria

The genus mycobacterium encompasses both pathogens and non-pathogens, alternatively both slow and rapid growers. They are the source of a variety of infectious diseases in a range of hosts. Comparative genome analyses provide useful information to understand the genome feature of each pathogenic species to its unique niche. In this work, we report the phylogenetic analysis of 47 mycobacterium species, whose genome sequences are complete and available. Trees were constructed using two approaches namely single sequence and genome feature based methods. While single sequence based tree cannot distinguish between MTB complex genomes, trees based on genome features were able to resolve them better. Gene order based phylogeny highlights distinct evolutionary characteristics as illustrated by the shift in the relative position of drug susceptible and resistant M. tuberculosis complex species. Thus, phylogenetic relationship between closely related organisms can be resolved by genome feature based tree methods.