Nikhil Bhalla, Nikita Goswami
ABSTRACT Large molecular inversions in the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) due to factors like the presence of insertion sequences and transposases are widely known. However, smaller inversions within coding sequences and non-coding control elements are rarely reported. The present study aims to identify inversions and their potential impact on Mtb biology in a lineage-specific manner. Structural variants (SVs) could only be detected by long reads. For this, we simulated long reads by de novo assembling the short-read sequencing data sets and subsequently aligned representative strains from each lineage using the Progressive Mauve algorithm. Independently, long-read sequencing from the Pacific Biosciences platform was acquired and analyzed using the structural variant identification method. Variants were merged, and Fisher’s exact test was carried out to identify the inversion association with lineages. To visualize deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) features, the DNA-features-viewer tool was used. Simulated reads from short-read sequencing gave indications of lineage (L)-specific inversions. The long-read sequencing approach led to the identification of seven unique inversions: two positively associated with L1, one positively associated with L3, two negatively associated with L4, and two positively associated with L3 but negatively associated with L4 ( P < 0.05). The inversions encompassed primarily non-essential genes like sdaA , dosT , Rv2026c, dnaE2 , Rv1341, Rv1342, and lprD . An interesting inversion was observed in the upstream control element of purB and Rv0776c. The study sheds light on small inversions that may be causing alterations in expression, formation of fusion genes, and nonsense mutations that may have a role in lineage-specific phenotypic changes. IMPORTANCE The role of mutations like SNPs and INDELs and their association with drug resistance is well known in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). However, structural variations, especially inversions, are largely overlooked and unreported. In this paper, publicly available whole-genome sequencing datasets from Illumina and Pacific Biosciences–Oxford Nanopore Technologies platform have been used to detect inversions and report seven unreported Mtb lineage-specific small inversions.