“…The identification of mycobacteria was traditionally based upon phenotypic and biochemical characteristics, nucleic acid probes (available for only a limited number of NTM), and high-performance liquid chromatography [ 7 ], all of which have been largely supplanted by 16S rRNA sequencing [ 8 ]. M. interjectum identification has been unsuccessful with biochemical and phenotypic techniques [ 7 ], since it has similar characteristics with other mycobacteria such as M. scrofulaceum , M. gordonae , and M. simiae [ 5 , 7 , 9 ]. Species level identification usually requires 16S rRNA gene sequencing [ 5 , 7 ], although use of sequence data from the hsp65 or rpoB genes has been described to be valuable tool in AFB identification [ 8 , 10 ].…”