Sequence variation within the P1 gene of Mycoplasma pneumoniae.

摘要

With interest, we have read the article by Zhao et al. (4), who describe the sequence of the PI gene from 60 Mycoplasma pneumoniae strains. In their paper, the authors claim to have found novel sequence variants of the PI gene. However, after comparison of these sequences with published PI sequences, we found that the "novel" variant PI sequences from five of the strains (which are referred to in the paper as "2c variants") are not entirely novel. Although these strains contain a remarkably high number of tandem repeats within the PI gene, which is indeed a new finding, they do not contain a novel variation within the RepMP4 element of the PI gene; in fact, the same variation has previously been reported in a study by Spuesens and coworkers (2).