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Proposal to elevate Mycobacterium avium complex ITS sequevar MAC-Q to Mycobacterium vulneris sp. nov.

¹ Department of Pulmonary Diseases, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
² National Mycobacteria Reference Laboratory, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, The Netherlands
³ Department of Clinical Microbiology, VieCuri Hospital, Venlo, The Netherlands
⁴ Department of Laboratory Medicine, HELIOS Hospital, Krefeld, Germany
⁵ Department of Surgery, VieCuri Hospital, Venlo, The Netherlands
⁶ Regional Reference Center for Mycobacteria, Microbiology and Virology Laboratory, Careggi Hospital, Florence, Italy

Correspondence
J. van Ingen
jakko.van.ingen{at}rivm.nl

The Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) consists of four recognized species, Mycobacterium avium, Mycobacterium colombiense, Mycobacterium intracellulare and Mycobacterium chimaera, and a variety of other strains that may be members of undescribed taxa. We report on two isolates of a scotochromogenic, slowly growing, non-tuberculous Mycobacterium species within the M. avium complex from a lymph node and an infected wound after a dogbite of separate patients in The Netherlands. The extrapulmonary infections in immunocompetent patients suggested a high level of virulence. These isolates were characterized by a unique nucleotide sequence in the 16S rRNA gene, 99 % similar to Mycobacterium colombiense, and the MAC-Q 16S–23S internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence. Sequence analyses of the hsp65 gene revealed 97 % similarity to M. avium. The rpoB gene sequence was 98 % similar to M. colombiense. Phenotypically, the scotochromogenicity, positive semi-quantitative catalase and heat-stable catalase tests, negative tellurite reductase and urease tests and susceptibility to hydroxylamine and oleic acid set these isolates apart from related species. High-performance liquid chromatography analysis of cell-wall mycolic acid content revealed a unique pattern, related to that of M. avium and M. colombiense. Together, these findings supported a separate species status within the Mycobacterium avium complex. We propose elevation of scotochromogenic M. avium complex strains sharing this 16S gene and MAC-Q ITS sequence to separate species status, for which the name Mycobacterium vulneris sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is NLA000700772^T (=DSM 45247^T=CIP 109859^T).

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the 16S rRNA and rpoB gene sequences of strain NLA000700772^T are EU834055 and EU834057, respectively. The accession numbers for the hsp65 gene sequences of strains NLA000700772^T and NLA009601918 are EU834054 and EU834056, respectively.

Phylogenetic trees based on hsp65 and rpoB gene sequences of selected Mycobacterium species are available as supplementary material with the online version of this paper.

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				J. van Ingen, J. A. Lindeboom, N. G. Hartwig, R. de Zwaan, E. Tortoli, P. N. R. Dekhuijzen, M. J. Boeree, and D. van Soolingen Mycobacterium mantenii sp. nov., a pathogenic, slowly growing, scotochromogenic species Int J Syst Evol Microbiol, November 1, 2009; 59(11): 2782 - 2787. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]