31441 - Whole Genome Sequencing Collaboration

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB), caused by Mycobacterium bovis, is a chronic disease of cattle, which remains a critical issue in livestock farming in many parts of the world, including the UK. Badgers were first identified as a potential source of the disease in UK cattle in 1971. Traditional genotyping approaches have been used to infer transmission between badgers and cattle. However, these methods have insufficient resolution to identify different sources of infection at finer spatial scales. This limits the value of...