Does Choice Matter? Reference Based Alignment for Molecular Epidemiology of Tuberculosis
ABSTRACT When using genome sequencing for molecular epidemiology, short sequence reads are aligned to an arbitrary reference strain to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms. We investigated whether reference genome selection influences epidemiological inferences of Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission by aligning sequence reads from 162 closely related lineage 4 (Euro American) isolates to 7 different genomes. Phylogenetic trees were consistent with use of all but the most divergent genomes, suggesting that reference choice can be based on considerations other than M. tuberculosis lineage.
Journal of Clinical Microbiology