Deciphering the biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the complete genome sequence.
Countless millions of people have died from tuberculosis, a chronic infectious disease caused by the tubercle bacillus. The complete genome sequence of the best-characterized strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, H37Rv, has been determined and analysed in order to improve our understanding of the biology of this slow-growing pathogen and to help the conception of new prophylactic and therapeutic interventions. The genome comprises 4,411,529 base pairs, contains around 4,000 genes, and has a very high guanine + cytosine content that is reflected in the biased amino-acid content of the proteins. M. tuberculosis differs radically from other bacteria in that a very large portion of its coding capacity is devoted to the production of enzymes involved in lipogenesis and lipolysis, and to two new families of glycine-rich proteins with a repetitive structure that may represent a source of antigenic variation.
Cole
S T
ST
Sanger Centre, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK. stcole@pasteur.fr
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Parkhill
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Garnier
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Churcher
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Harris
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Gordon
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Barry
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Badcock
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Davies
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Hamlin
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Hornsby
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Osborne
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Quail
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Rutter
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Seeger
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Skelton
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Sulston
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D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D002876:Chromosomes, Bacterial; D004352:Drug Resistance, Microbial; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D006801:Humans; D050356:Lipid Metabolism; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism / Q000472:pathogenicity; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D014376:Tuberculosis / Q000382:microbiology