New DNA Analysis Provides First Accurate Tuberculosis Genome

Researchers have developed a novel genome assembly tool that could spur the development of new treatments for tuberculosis and other bacterial infections. The new tool, which has created an improved genome map of one tuberculosis strain, should do likewise for other strains and other types of bacteria, according to researchers whose findings appeared in Nature Communications.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria responsible for the disease tuberculosis, infects about a quarter of the world’s population and killed 1.6 million people in 2021, according to World Health Organization. Current medical interventions are limited to a century-old vaccine that reduces infection risk by 20 percent and four to six months of strong antibiotics that sometimes prove ineffective.