ABSTRACT
Mycobacteriumspp. are intimately linked to human society. This chapter presents an overview of foodborne Mycobacterium spp., including the background information and recent findings relating to the etiology, life cycle, virulence, immunity, and clinical diseases, as well as genomic aspects such as annotation, genome comparison of closely related organisms, and virulence-related genes. It focuses on mycobacteria species involved in foodborne diseases. In a genome analysis, a comparison of a set of virulence-related genes present in these genomes has been made by using Blastn and Blastx and having M. bovis AF2122/97 as a reference genome. The chapter then briefly reviews the model of immune response against M. bovis. Following infection, innate immune responses are important for recruiting immune cells and establishing early lesion formation; however, these responses do little to limit infection. Several reasons make Mycobacterium an important bacterial model for foodborne infection. M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis is a nontuberculosis mycobacterial human foodborne pathogen, with the ability to survive pasteurization treatments.
