K-mer applied in Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome cluster analysis

Abstract

According to studies carried out, approximately 10 million people developed tuberculosis in 2018. Of this total, 1.5 million people died from the disease. To study the behavior of the genome sequences of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), the bacterium responsible for the development of tuberculosis (TB), an analysis was performed using k-mers (DNA word frequency). The k values ranged from 1 to 10, because the analysis was performed on the full length of the sequences, where each sequence is composed of approximately 4 million base pairs, k values above 10, the analysis is interrupted, as consequence of the program's capacity. The aim of this work was to verify the formation of the phylogenetic tree in each k-mer analyzed. The results showed the formation of distinct groups in some k-mers analyzed, taking into account the threshold line. However, in all groups, the multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains remained together and separated from the other strains.

Level function levels and oxidative stress markers in patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the Brazilian Amazon

“…Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a pathogenic aerobic bacterium that preferentially settles in the lungs and is basically transmitted through the upper respiratory tract (Ferreira et al, 2024). This microorganism can reach any organ by hematogenous dissemination and when the disease is established, its location, severity and evolution are highly variable (WHO, 2018).…”