Study on TB in Africa reveals a new lineage in the eastern part of the continent

Mireia Coscollá, a researcher at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio), a joint centre of the University of Valencia and the Spanish National Research Council, has led a study on the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, one of the 10 deadliest diseases in the world, which proves the existence of a new lineage. After analysing 675 African genomes in an article published in the journal Microbial Genomics, he concludes that the new lineage, named L9, is located mainly in the eastern part of the continent.