Learning from the genome sequence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis?

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the scourge of humanity is one of the most succ essful and scientifically challenging pathogens of all time. To catalyze th e conception of new prophylactic and therapeutic interventions against tube rculosis, and to enhance our understanding of the biology of the tubericle bacillus, the complete genome sequence of the most widely used strain, H37R v, has been determined. Bioinformatic analysis led to the identification of similar to 4,000 genes in the 4.41 Mb genome sequence and provided fresh i nsight into the biochemistry physiology, genetics and immunology of this mu ch-feared bacterium. Genomic information is centralised in TubercuList (htt p : //www.pasteur.fr/Bio/TubercuList/).