What is the classification of Mycobacterium leprae?
Data Quality Indicators:
| Order | Actinomycetales Buchanan, 1917 |
| Suborder | Corynebacterineae Stackebrandt et al., 1997 |
| Family | Mycobacteriaceae Chester, 1897 |
| Genus | Mycobacterium Lehmann and Neumann, 1896 |
| Species | Mycobacterium leprae (Hansen, 1880) Lehmann and Neumann, 1896 |
What is the common name for Mycobacterium leprae?
Hansen’s disease (also known as leprosy) is an infection caused by slow-growing bacteria called Mycobacterium leprae.
Is Mycobacterium leprae Gram positive or negative?
Mycobacterium leprae is an aerobic, rod-shaped, Gram-positive bacterium in the Mycobacteriaceae family. Infections with this bacterium lead to leprosy.
What is the generation time of M. leprae?
The organism generation time is extremely long, around 14 days on average, thus the determination of antibiotic sensitivity takes several months.
Does M. leprae have a capsule?
M. leprae is a straight rod shaped bacillus 1-8 m long and 0.3 m diameter. Its capsule is composed of two lipids, phthiocerol dimycoserosate and a phenolic glycolipid, chemically unique and antigenically specific to M.
What is the average incubation period of M. leprae?
M leprae multiplies slowly and the incubation period of the disease, on average, is 5 years. Symptoms may occur within 1 year but can also take as long as 20 years or even more.
How do you stain Mycobacterium leprae?
For staining, cover the entire surface of the slide with filtered Ziehl-Neelsen carbofuchsine (about 5 ml) for 20 min. Rinse the slide in running water (slow flow). Cover the slide with a 10% acid alcohol solution for about 20 sec. Wash the slide again in running water.
Can be used to identify Mycobacterium Tuberculosisand M. leprae?
The repetitive element IS1081 is also used to detect DNA from the MTBC and, as there are normally six copies per cell, it has been used for quantitative analysis and for the detection of M.
Can you Gram stain Mycobacterium leprae?
Due to its thick waxy coating, M. leprae stains with a carbol fuchsin rather than with the traditional Gram stain. Efforts to culture the bacteria in vivo are still unsuccessful.
Can M. leprae be cultured?
Mycobacterium leprae is extremely fastidious in regard to growth requirements and is yet to be successfully cultured on artificial media. It can be grown in laboratory mice using Shepard’s hind footpad inoculation method.
How does M. leprae work?
M. leprae has the remarkable capacity to invade Schwann cells of the peripheral nerve, which enclose and support the axons of sensory and motor neurons. Schwann cell infection causes many complex biological and pathological alterations including demyelination, de-differentiation and reprogramming of the cells.
What is the genome of Mycobacterium leprae?
The genome of Mycobacterium leprae: a minimal mycobacterial gene set. Genome Biol. 2001;2(8)REVIEWS1023. [PMC free article][PubMed] [Google Scholar]
What is the function of pseudogenes in Mycoplasma leprae?
The rate of pseudogene deletion in M. lepraeappears to be slower than in other bacteria [31] and this suggests that these sequences could provide back-up functions or be activated by events such as gene conversion in unusual circumstances. Pseudogenes might thus represent a reservoir for genetic diversity.
What can we learn from Mycobacterium leprae remains?
Such remains can be used for paleomicrobiological studies as M. leprae, and its DNA can be detected in bone fragments, particularly from the faciomaxillary region [22,92–99].
What do phylogenetic studies of Mycoplasma leprae tell us about human evolution?
Phylogeographical studies of M. lepraehave shed light on human migration and on the evolution of the disease itself. According to the phylogenetic scheme derived from the SNP data, it is likely that ancestral M. lepraein East Africa or the Near East had a genotype that most probably resembled the present SNP type 2 strains.