Deciphering the biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the complete genome sequence

  • Nature. 1998 Jun 11;393(6685):537-44. doi: 10.1038/31159.
S T Cole  1 ,  R Brosch ,  J Parkhill ,  T Garnier ,  C Churcher ,  D Harris ,  S V Gordon ,  K Eiglmeier ,  S Gas ,  C E Barry 3rd ,  F Tekaia ,  K Badcock ,  D Basham ,  D Brown ,  T Chillingworth ,  R Connor ,  R Davies ,  K Devlin ,  T Feltwell ,  S Gentles ,  N Hamlin ,  S Holroyd ,  T Hornsby ,  K Jagels ,  A Krogh ,  J McLean ,  S Moule ,  L Murphy ,  K Oliver ,  J Osborne ,  M A Quail ,  M A Rajandream ,  J Rogers ,  S Rutter ,  K Seeger ,  J Skelton ,  R Squares ,  S Squares ,  J E Sulston ,  K Taylor ,  S Whitehead ,  B G Barrell
Affiliations
PMID: 9634230 DOI: 10.1038/31159
Abstract

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.