This large-scale in silico analysis reveals a highly skewed global sequence-type distribution of M. tuberculosis, with pronounced geographic structuring and widespread presence of conserved, intrinsic chromosomal resistance-associated genes. The findings emphasize the importance of cautious interpretation of resistance gene prevalence and phenotypic non-susceptibility patterns derived from heterogeneous public datasets, and highlight key methodological considerations for global genomic analyses of M. tuberculosis.
Alhusseini et al. (Sun,) studied this question.