Mycobacterium ulcerans AGY99

Mycobacterium ulcerans AGY99 is an emerging pathogen that causes Buruli ulcer, a chronic, necrotic skin lesion in humans, and has rapidly emerged as an important cause of morbidity around the world. The prevalence of Buruli ulcer throughout West Africa appears to have increased dramatically since the late 1980s. Buruli ulcer is considered the third most common mycobacterial disease of non-immunocompromised persons after tuberculosis and leprosy. M. ulcerans is unlike other mycobacterial pathogens in that it appears to maintain an extracellular location during infection and produces a macrolide toxin, mycolactone. Despite several extensive investigations over the past 30 years, the mode of transmission of M. ulcerans has not been determined. It has been suggested that M. ulcerans is derived from M. marinum, an intracellular pathogen of fish and humans, commonly isolated from aquatic environments worldwide. Indeed, according to one hypothesis, M. ulcerans may have diverged recently from M. marinum by the recruitment of foreign DNA from the environment. The Mycobacterium ulcerans AGY99 genome was sequenced by The Institut Pasteur and has a total of 4160 genes.