Rapid and simple approach for identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and M. bovis by detection of regulatory gene whiB7

Identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and M. bovis is necessary for the application of adequate drug therapy. PCR amplification is a good tool for this purpose, but choosing proper target is of a great concern. We describe a PCR assay for fast detection of M. tuberculosis and M. bovis.As a BLAST and BLASTP search we selected regulatory gene whiB7 that encodes multi-drug resistance in this bacterium. Thirty clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis were sequenced and all the mutations in gene whiB7 were detected. The best set of several pairs of primers was selected and used in comparison by rpoB gene for differentiation of M. bovis, M. avium, M. kansasii, M. phlei, M. fortuitum, M. terrae, seven non-pathogenic Mycobacterium isolates and 30 clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis.It was proved that only clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis and M. bovis have positive bands of 667 bp whiB7. Other non-tuberculous and non-pathogenic isolates did not show any positive sign. Furthermore, 667-bp PCR products of whiB7 gene were observed for ten positive sputum samples (preliminarily approved to be positive for M. tuberculosis by commercially real-time based method), but no bands were detected in 5 negative sputum samples. RpoB gene could not differentiate non-tuberculous strains and non-pathogenic isolates from pathogenic clinical isolates. We concluded that PCR amplification of the gene coding for the WhiB7 protein could be successfully used as a good tool for rapid identification of M. tuberculosis and M. bovis. We propose application of this method as a rapid and simple approach in mycobacteriological laboratories.