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Researchers identify 39 genes related to TB drug resistance
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Thirty-nine new genes that are associated with drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis have been identified by researchers from Harvard Medical School, according to a report in Nature Genetics.
“We have found that more genes might be implicated in resistance than previously thought, and this means that we can start to unravel the role of these genes,” Megan Murray, MD, MPH, ScD, professor of global health and medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a press release. “This is significant because it implicates new mechanisms in the evolution of resistance that can be further studied now and raises the possibility of more specific targets for the detection of resistance through molecular methods.”
Megan Murray
Murray and colleagues used phylogenetics to examine the whole genomes of 116 newly sequenced TB strains and seven previously sequenced strains. Among them were 47 strains that had exhibited various levels of resistance to different TB drugs. There also was a group of strains that were susceptible to typical treatments. The strains were collected from human populations at dozens of sites worldwide, including strains from outbreaks in British Columbia, Rome, South Africa and Russia.
According to the researchers, these markers may help aid new drug development and serve as a tool for diagnosing drug-resistant TB. Because many of the genes that they identified are related to the bacteria’s regulation of cell walls, which is what many drugs target, the researchers hypothesize that changes to the structure or metabolism of cell walls might be responsible for drug resistance to a wide variety of drugs.
“Until now, people assumed that single mutations conferred high-level resistance — a strain either had them or did not — but our results challenge that paradigm,” Murray said.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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