Taxonomic identification of Mycobacterium leprae strains isolated in the Russian Federation by assessing the sequence of the gene encoding 16S ribosomal RNA

We analyzed the sequence of the gene encoding 16S ribosomal RNA in 2 samples containing a mixture of human DNA and Mycobacterium leprae DNA obtained from two patients from the Russian Federation. We found that our sequence matched the sequence of the reference strain deposited at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI, USA). The analysis was performed using Sanger sequencing with a mixture of microbial and human DNA isolated from skin biopsy specimens. We assume that the difficulties associated with sequencing of the full-size rrs gene can be addressed by using a speciesspecific sequence of the rrs promoter region to identify M. leprae. Key words: leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae, rrs, 16S rRNA