Research Group: Bacterial Pathogenomics

The Tuberculosis disease is the leading cause of death from a single pathogen according to the latest estimates of the World Health Organization. This is largely due to the host's immune status, but also to the success of the transmission and infection strategy of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogen. M. tuberculosis is diverse, genetically and also phenotypically, including virulence-related phenotypes. Genomic differences can distinguish at least eleven M. tuberculosis lineages that cause diseases in different hosts and different human populations. We do not know if, like other pathogens, M. tuberculosis exploits antigenic variation to overcome the host's immune system, or even to adapt to a specific host or populations. Given the importance of understanding the strategies of immune evasion of M. tuberculosis, our objective was to provide a phylogenomic framework of the different lineages of M. tuberculosis in different hosts and to study the genomic diversity of the antigens.

Mireia Coscollá

Generalitat Valenciana