 EditorialIndia's 'gold mine' of ancestral bacilli and the looming TB-HIV pandemicNiyaz Ahmed1  and Hakan Leblebicioglu2  1
Pathogen Evolution Group, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) Hyderabad, India 2
Department of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, Ondokuz Mayis University Medical School, Samsun, Turkey  author email corresponding author email
Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials 2006,
5:31doi:10.1186/1476-0711-5-31
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| Published: |
22 December 2006 |
First paragraph (this article has no abstract)
It's almost a decade since the whole genome sequence of the tubercle bacillus M. tuberculosis was completed. The genome sequence of tuberculosis (TB) bacteria has opened various new avenues for studying biology of TB as well as heralded major funding possibilities for researchers worldwide. However, it is pathetic to realize that we do not have ready a 'promising' new drug target, a 'perfect' vaccine candidate or a 'gold standard' diagnostic marker as yet, for this dreaded pestilence. Countries like India are worst sufferers of such a disappointingly delayed fruit of post-genomic TB research and technology. Nonetheless, significant benefits arising in terms of exploratory genomics have helped the clinical cause of tracking and analyzing the strains of epidemic potential. Gutierrez and colleagues [1] in a recently reported multicentric research based on genotyping of TB strains prevalent in modern day India pointed to reservoirs of the ancestral strains, which continue to predominate throughout the population. Sujatha Narayanan from the Tuberculosis Research Centre in Chennai echoed similar scenario for Tamil Nadu area in the recently held 8th Congress of Molecular Epidemiology and Evolutionary Genetics of Infectious Diseases (MEEGID) at Bangkok in Thailand [2]. | 
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