New insight into the pathophysiology of tuberculosis

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, a lung disease affecting over 10 million people per year and leading to the death of more than 1 million of them. While intensely studied since its discovery as bacteria causing tuberculosis by Robert Koch in 1882, there are still multiple unknown parts in the biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis which underlie its pathogenicity. The study led by Vivek Thacker in the group of John McKinney sheds a new light onto the role of cords, composed of tightly packed Mycobacterium tuberculosis, in bacterial spreading, protection against antibiotics and host inflammatory responses. The BIOEM platform carried out the correlated light and 3D electron microscopy to target and characterize groups of bacteria in the studied cellular model, the PTH adapted and performed the RNAscope assays and the BICC helped with the RNA sequencing data analysis.