Advances in gene sequencing have enabled in silico analyses of microbial genomes and have led to the revision of concepts of microbial taxonomy and evolution. We explore deficiencies in existing multiple sequence global alignment algorithms and introduce a new indexing scheme to partition the dynamic programming algorithm hypercube scoring tensor over processors based on the dependency between ...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates cultured from 6 patients associated with an isoniazid-resistant M. tuberculosis outbreak acquired rifampicin resistance. The rpoB gene sequence showed that resistance was associated with rare mutations in each isolate. Three isolates had a mutation outside the rifampicin resistance-determining region.

Rifampin-resistant meningococcal disease occurred in a child who had completed rifampin chemoprophylaxis for exposure to a sibling with meningococcemia. Susceptibility testing of 331 case isolates found only 1 other case of rifampin-resistant disease in Minnesota, USA, during 11 years of statewide surveillance. Point mutations in the RNA polymerase Beta subunit (rpoB) gene were found in isolate...

We describe two patients with otologic infections caused by Mycobacterium massiliense (M. abscessus subsp. bolletti) which were identified using erm(41) PCR, 23S rRNA, and rpoB gene sequence analysis. They were middle-aged adults with underlying otologic diseases and were treated successfully with clarithromycin-based combination regimens for 3 and 9 months, respectively.

Peptide nucleic acid-mediated competitive PCR clamping, which can selectively amplify mutant alleles, was developed to detect mutations in four codons (513, 516, 526, and 531) of the rpoB gene in Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains. This simple method successfully identified the mutations in all 40 of the M. tuberculosis strains tested.

Rifampin (RIF) is a first-line antituberculosis drug. Resistance to RIF, in the majority of cases, has been associated with mutations within an 81-bp RIF resistance-determining region (RRDR) of the rpoB gene, which encodes the subunit of the RNA polymerase (8). RIF acts by binding to the subunit of the RNA polymerase, thus interfering with transcription and RNA elongation. Although targeted mol...

Of 162 multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from Taiwan, 60.5% were found to belong to the Beijing family on the basis of spoligotyping results. IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism fingerprinting showed genetic diversity among the multidrug-resistant isolates. Furthermore, 90.1% of the multidrug-resistant isolates had mutations in the rpoB gene, and 11 novel allel...