Genome of Drug Resistant TB Strains Cracked

Researchers from the U.S. and South Africa on Tuesday announced that they have decoded the genome sequence of strains of drug-sensitive tuberculosis, multi-drug resistant TB and extensively drug-resistant TB, which is resistant to the two most potent first-line drugs and some of the available second-line drugs, Reuters reports. Teams from the Microbial Sequencing Center at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in South Africa collaborated on the study.

For the study, the researchers compared the different strains of TB to identify several mutations that might explain how drug-resistant TB eludes some antibiotic treatments. Initial data showed that the drug-resistant and drug-sensitive microbes differ at a few dozen locations along the four-million-letter DNA code. The code reveals some known drug resistance genes, as well as some additional genes that could enhance understanding of how TB is spread.