IS6110 (Thierry et al., 1990a, 1990b) is nearly identical to IS986 (8 differences including 1 insertion and 2 deletions) and IS987. IS6110 has been recommended as reference name for these elements (van Embden et al., 1993). However, since no putative ORFs are present in IS6110, those of IS987 are taken as reference for this database (108 [52-378] and 325 [336-1313]). IS6110 is present in 16 copies in the M.tuberculosis HRV7. It is important to note that 14 of these copies are identical (i.e. carry the same "mutatant" positions). IS6110 is specific of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex and can be used as strain-specific marker (using PCR techniques) for epidemiological studies of tuberculosis (Mazurek et al., 1991, Otal et al., 1991, Yang et al., 1994) or to detect the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in blood samples (Schluger et al., 1994a). Interestingly, IS6110 was also used for the identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA in a 1000-year-old adult female mummy from Peru (Salo et al., 1994). In contrast to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, isolates of Mycobacterium bovis have been found to harbor one or very few copies of IS6110, hampering IS6110-associated RFLP studies in this microorganism (van Soolingen et al., 1994). Note that IS6110 transposition frequency is thought to be very low: a single transposition event over a 58 year long period ! (Cave et al., 1991).
Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome position 889019-890373 ; 1543304-1541950 ; 1989055-1987701 ; 1996099-1997453 ; 2365412-2366766 ; 2431469-2430115 ; 2550012-2551366 ; 2635575-2636929 ; 2785968-2784612 ; 2972106-2973460 ; 3121894-3120520 ; 3551227-3552581 ; 3552710-3554064 ; 3710378-3711732 ; 3795054-3796408 ; 3890775-3892129 ;
Additionnal Accession number : AF189827