Central Asian family (CAS) has been identified mostly in India, where presents a common sub-lineage called CAS-1 [7]. East African Indonesian family (EAI) has a higher prevalence in Southeast Asia, particularly in The Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand [12, 13]. Finally, the U family (Undefined) does not meet the criteria of the other described families and it is considered separately [5]. Furthermore, a set of SNPs has been published as markers with phylogenetic value. Thus, seven phylogenetically different SNP cluster groups (SCGs) with 5 subgroups have been defined based on a set of SNPs, which have been related to the previously
defined families [14–16]. Other significant polymorphisms were described as markers for particular families. By way of illustration, SNP in Ag85C 103(GAG→GAA) has been associated with LAM family strains [8] and among these strains a genomic find more deletion known as RDRio has been EPZ-6438 defined [9]. Likewise, some specific polymorphisms in ogt 44(ACC→AGC) , ung501 501(CTG→CTA) and mgtC 182(CGC→CAC) could serve as genetic markers for Haarlem family [17, 18]. Finally, a global phylogeny for M. tuberculosis was described based on LSPs by six phylogeographical lineages, besides the M. bovis and M. canetti branches [19], showing the prevalence of one of the lineages in Europe and America, the Euro-American lineage, which
regroups the strains that had generally been described as principal genetic groups (PGG) 2 and 3 [19]. Since 2004 the genotyping
of all clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis complex by IS6110-based restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and Spoligotyping in Aragon is systematically performed. Aragon is a region in the Northeast of Spain with 1,345,419 registered inhabitants in the studied year 2010 (http://www.ine.es/jaxi/tabla.do). The aim of this study was to classify our collection of isolates into SCG lineages, especially those Bay 11-7085 belonging to “U”, “ill-defined” T families and isolates with no family associated. With this intention, we have designed a method based on SNPs detection by multiplex-PCR and pyrosequencing [16, 20]. Methods Sample selection A total of 173 clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis complex collected as part of standard patient care from different areas within Aragon in 2010 had been previously identified, susceptibility to first line drugs tested and genotyped by using IS6110-RFLP and Spoligotyping techniques. These isolates had been assigned to a lineage or family after have been compared their spoligopatterns with those of the SpolDB4 (fourth international spoligotyping database) [5], in the context of the Surveillance Network monitoring the potential transmission of tuberculosis in Aragon. For the SCG determination assay 101 out of 173 were selected according to the following conditions: only one sample for each RFLP-IS6110 cluster and the samples with a unique RFLP.