Genomic Analysis of Mycobacterium abscessus Strain M139, Which Has an Ambiguous Subspecies Taxonomic Position

Mycobacterium abscessus is a ubiquitous, rapidly growing species of nontuberculous mycobacteria that colonizes organic sur-faces and is frequently associated with opportunistic infections in humans. We report here the draft genome sequence ofMyco-bacterium abscessus strain M139, which shows genomic features reported to be characteristic of bothMycobacterium abscessus subsp. abscessus andMycobacterium abscessus subsp.massiliense. The nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are gaining im-portance as human pathogens, as they are being recovered from an increasingly wide spectrum of clinical material (2, 6, 9). Many of them show intrinsic resistance to antituberculosis drugs currently in use, and their identification beyond the spe-cies level is sometimes necessary to predict their response to antibiotic therapy (3). The species Mycobacterium abscessus, which has been associated with skin and soft tissue lesions, as well as pulmonary and other deep-seated sepsis (5), has been subdivided into subspecies by DNA sequence variation de-tected by molecular tests based on individual genes or a com-bination of genes (7). We had shotgun sequenced another ge