Gene that controls susceptibility to tuberculosis discovered

Investigators at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) have identified a gene that regulates the susceptibility to tuberculosis. This finding is published in this week’s edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Tuberculosis, an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, affects approximately 1.9 billion people worldwide. However, a large proportion of these individuals do not develop tuberculosis symptoms. Their body defense systems, or immune systems, are capable of controlling the growth of the bacteria.

“We have identified a gene that controls Mycobacterium tuberculosis growth in the lung,” says MUHC microbiologist and senior author Dr. Philippe Gros. “This is an important step toward understanding why some infected individuals are able to fight off the infection and others are not. This discovery may lead to innovative prevention and treatment strategies for the 2 million patients who die from tuberculosis yearly.”

Gros, also a professor of Biochemistry and Medicine at McGill University, along with his graduate student, Loukia Mitsosand, and his colleagues from the University of Oxford and the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake NY, used a mouse model and a technique called genome scanning to find the gene. They infected mice with air-borne bacteria and compared the DNA of those who were susceptible to infection with those who were not. A common gene variant on chromosome 19 was identified in those mice that were susceptible to infection. These mice had greater number of bacteria in their lungs and died earlier. “We believe that the gene variant, Trl-4, controls the growth of the bacteria in the lung. The next step is to test if this gene is present in humans who are susceptible to the disease,” concludes Gros.

This study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is available online at http://www.pnas.org.

For more information, please contact:
Christine Zeindler, MSc
Communications Coordinator (Research)
McGill University Health Centre Communications Services
514-934-1934 ext. 36419
pager: 514-406-1577

Media Contact

Christine Zeindler EurekAlert!

All latest news from the category: Life Sciences and Chemistry

Articles and reports from the Life Sciences and chemistry area deal with applied and basic research into modern biology, chemistry and human medicine.

Valuable information can be found on a range of life sciences fields including bacteriology, biochemistry, bionics, bioinformatics, biophysics, biotechnology, genetics, geobotany, human biology, marine biology, microbiology, molecular biology, cellular biology, zoology, bioinorganic chemistry, microchemistry and environmental chemistry.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors