Species belonging to the Mycobacterium kansasii complex (MKC) are frequently isolated from humans and the environment and can cause serious diseases. The most common MKC infections are caused by the species M. kansasii (sensu stricto), leading to tuberculosis-like disease. However, a broad spectrum of virulence, antimicrobial resistance and pathogenicity of these non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are observed across the MKC. Many genomic aspects of the MKC that relate to these broad phenotypes are not well elucidated. Here, we performed genomic analyses from a collection of 665 MKC strains, isolated from environmental, animal and human sources. We inferred the MKC pangenome, mobilome, resistome, virulome and defence systems and show that the MKC species harbours unique and shared genomic signatures. High frequency of presence of prophages and different types of defence systems were observed. We found that the M. kansasii species splits into four lineages, of which three are lowly represented and mainly in Brazil, while one lineage is dominant and globally spread. Moreover, we show that four sub-lineages of this most distributed M. kansasii lineage emerged during the twentieth century. Further analysis of the M. kansasii genomes revealed almost 300 regions of difference contributing to genomic diversity, as well as fixed mutations that may explain the M. kansasii's increased virulence and drug resistance.
Keywords: Mycobacterium kansasii; lineages; pangenome; phylogenomics; virulence.