Blueprint for the white plague

摘要

With annual deaths from Mycobacterium tuberculosis estimated at around three million, this single pathogen claims more human lives than any other. What we now learn from the sequence of its genome should help in devising new strategies to fight it. "Now — under the microscope the structures of the animal tissues... are brown, while the tubercle bacteria are a beautiful blue." More than a century after Robert Koch's historic lecture, we are presented with a new-perspective on Mycobacterium tuberculosis — the complete sequence of its genome, reported by Stewart Cole and his colleagues on page 537 of this issue. Although no longer blue, it retains a sense of beauty, and the sequence marks a new phase in the battle against one of mankind's most successful predators.