Unlike Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, non-tuberculous mycobacteria can harbor plasmids. However, their role in virulence and pathogenesis remains largely uninvestigated.
In this work, led by Dr. Margo Diricks, over 9000 genomic datasets of NTM were investigated regarding their plasmid content, the distribution of plasmids across species/subspecies/(sub)lineages, and the presence of virulence/resistance genes on detected plasmids.
You can find the paper here, at miru-ffm.org, the journal's homepage, or at PubMed.