Nature Communications (May 2021)

Genomic analyses of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from human lung resections reveal a high frequency of polyclonal infections

  • Miguel Moreno-Molina,
  • Natalia Shubladze,
  • Iza Khurtsilava,
  • Zaza Avaliani,
  • Nino Bablishvili,
  • Manuela Torres-Puente,
  • Luis Villamayor,
  • Andrei Gabrielian,
  • Alex Rosenthal,
  • Cristina Vilaplana,
  • Sebastien Gagneux,
  • Russell R. Kempker,
  • Sergo Vashakidze,
  • Iñaki Comas

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22705-z
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 11

Abstract

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Polyclonal infections occur when at least two unrelated strains of the same pathogen are detected in an individual. Here, Moreno-Molina et al. analyse sputum and surgical resections from tuberculosis patients, showing that the magnitude of polyclonal infections can be underestimated when only testing sputum samples.