DnaE2 Polymerase Contributes to In Vivo Survival and the Emergence of Drug Resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

 

3/23/2004

Yi-Feng Chang

Tuberculosis (TB) is a chronic disease that caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which can incur very severe lung disease. According to the statistic of WHO, approximately one third of the world’s population is estimated to be infected with this pathogen, and millions of people death every year.  Drug resistance is one of the reasons why TB is so difficult to eradicate.  Decipher the mechanism of drug resistance of MTb may reveal new therapeutic methods for this disease.  In this paper, authors first discover how drug resistance happened in MTb by gene expression analysis, and then prove DnaE2 polymerase is a major factor that directly contributes the drug resistance in MTb.

 

Authors: Boshoff, H. I. M., Reed, M. B., Barry III, C.E., and Mizrahi, V.

Source: Cell, Vol. 113, 183-193.

 

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