Student or educator? Sign up with your school email and get 6 months of Pro free.
Cited by 396

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 36 of the 36 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Reductive evolution and niche adaptation inferred from the genome of Mycobacterium ulcerans, the causative agent of Buruli ulcer

Open access
Stinear, Timothy P., Seemann, Torsten, Pidot, Sacha, Frigui, Wafa, Reysset, Gilles, Garnier, Thierry, Meurice, Guillaume, Simon, David, Bouchier, Christiane, Ma, Laurence, Tichit, Magali, Porter, Jessica L., Ryan, Janine, Johnson, Paul D.R., Davies, John K., Jenkin, Grant A., Small, Pamela L.C., Jones, Louis M., Tekaia, Fredj, Laval, Françoise, Daffé, Mamadou, Parkhill, Julian, Cole, Stewart T.·2007·Genome Research

Abstract

Mycobacterium ulcerans is found in aquatic ecosystems and causes Buruli ulcer in humans, a neglected but devastating necrotic disease of subcutaneous tissue that is rampant throughout West and Central Africa. Here, we report the complete 5.8-Mb genome sequence of M. ulcerans and show that it comprises two circular replicons, a chromosome of 5632 kb and a virulence plasmid of 174 kb. The plasmid is required for production of the polyketide toxin mycolactone, which provokes necrosis. Comparisons with the recently completed 6.6-Mb genome of Mycobacterium marinum revealed >98% nucleotide sequence identity and genome-wide synteny. However, as well as the plasmid, M. ulcerans has accumulated 213 copies of the insertion sequence IS 2404, 91 copies of IS 2606, 771 pseudogenes, two bacteriophages, and multiple DNA deletions and rearrangements. These data indicate that M. ulcerans has recently evolved via lateral gene transfer and reductive evolution from the generalist, more rapid-growing environmental species M. marinum to become a niche-adapted specialist. Predictions based on genome inspection for the production of modified mycobacterial virulence factors, such as the highly abundant phthiodiolone lipids, were confirmed by structural analyses. Similarly, 11 protein-coding sequences identified as M. ulcerans-specific by comparative genomics were verified as such by PCR screening a diverse collection of 33 strains of M. ulcerans and M. marinum. This work offers significant insight into the biology and evolution of mycobacterial pathogens and is an important component of international efforts to counter Buruli ulcer.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1101/gr.5942807

Cites

36 of 36 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 36 references

Cited by

See all 396

Metadata

Authors
Stinear, T. P., Seemann, T., Pidot, S., Frigui, W., Reysset, G., Garnier, T., Meurice, G., Simon, D., Bouchier, C., Ma, L., Tichit, M., Porter, J. L., Ryan, J., Johnson, P. D. R., Davies, J. K., Jenkin, G. A., Small, P. L. C., Jones, L. M., Tekaia, F., Laval, F., Daffé, M., Parkhill, J., & Cole, S. T.
Venue
Genome Research
Published
2007-01-08
Volume
17
Issue
2
Pages
192-200
ISSN
1088-9051 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2099098590
Cited by
396
References
36
Type
posted content
Language
en
Open access
bronze

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Reductive evolution and niche adaptation inferred from the genome of Mycobacterium ulcerans, the causative agent of Buruli ulcer. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1101/gr.5942807
The paper
Stinear, T. P., Seemann, T., Pidot, S., Frigui, W., Reysset, G., Garnier, T., Meurice, G., Simon, D., Bouchier, C., Ma, L., Tichit, M., Porter, J. L., Ryan, J., Johnson, P. D. R., Davies, J. K., Jenkin, G. A., Small, P. L. C., Jones, L. M., Tekaia, F., . . . Cole, S. T. (2007). Reductive evolution and niche adaptation inferred from the genome of Mycobacterium ulcerans, the causative agent of Buruli ulcer. Genome Research. https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.5942807

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.