Molecular Evolution of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the oldest and deadliest human infectious disease. Only innovative tools will allow realistic approximations to TB eradication. This project aims at filling key knowledge gaps on fundamental biological aspects of TB including the microevolutionary dynamics of M. tuberculosis. This undertaking is challenged by technical difficulties including the inability of gold standard sequencing technologies to provide reliable information on parts of the M. tuberculosis genome. This project is based on a combination of different sequencing technologies, bioinformatics and experimental genetics approaches to characterize M. tuberculosis clinical isolates. Overall, we will provide advances for the understanding of evolutionary mechanisms likely to influence the capacity of M. tuberculosis to adapt to relevant selective pressures often dictating drug resistance and disease severity.

Funding Agency

FCT

Project Reference

Project Members

Main Project Outcomes

S. Queirós, “Right ventricular segmentation in multi-view cardiac MRI using a unified U-net model”, in E. Puyol Antón et al. (eds) Statistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart. Multi-Disease, Multi-View, and Multi-Center Right Ventricular Segmentation in Cardiac MRI Challenge. STACOM 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13131, pp. 287-295, Springer, Cham, 2022.

“Best Paper Award in the M&Ms-2 Challenge”, by M&Ms2 Challenge organizers and the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) Society.

Main Project Outcomes

Publications

Rocha, D. M. G. C., Viveiros, M., Saraiva, M., & Osório, N. S. (2021). The Neglected Contribution of Streptomycin to the Tuberculosis Drug Resistance Problem. In Genes (Vol. 12, Issue 12, p. 2003). MDPI AG. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes12122003
Rocha, D. M. G. C., Magalhães, C., Cá, B., Ramos, A., Carvalho, T., Comas, I., Guimarães, J. T., Bastos, H. N., Saraiva, M., & Osório, N. S. (2021). Heterogeneous Streptomycin Resistance Level Among Mycobacterium tuberculosis Strains From the Same Transmission Cluster. In Frontiers in Microbiology (Vol. 12). Frontiers Media SA. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2021.659545
Santos-Pereira, A., Magalhães, C., Araújo, P. M. M., & Osório, N. S. (2021). Evolutionary Genetics of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis and HIV-1: “The Tortoise and the Hare.” In Microorganisms (Vol. 9, Issue 1, p. 147). MDPI AG. https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms9010147
Sousa, J., Cá, B., Maceiras, A. R., Simões-Costa, L., Fonseca, K. L., Fernandes, A. I., Ramos, A., Carvalho, T., Barros, L., Magalhães, C., Chiner-Oms, Á., Machado, H., Veiga, M. I., Singh, A., Pereira, R., Amorim, A., Vieira, J., Vieira, C. P., Bhatt, A., … Saraiva, M. (2020). Mycobacterium tuberculosis associated with severe tuberculosis evades cytosolic surveillance systems and modulates IL-1β production. In Nature Communications (Vol. 11, Issue 1). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15832-6