Can Mycobacterial Genomics Generate Novel Targets as Speed-Breakers Against the Race for Drug Resistance

The rise of multi-drug resistant and extensively drug resistant M. tuberculosis around the world poses a great threat to human health, and necessitates development of new, effective and inexpensive anti-tubercular agents. The availability of knowledge on molecular biology of M. tuberculosis infection coupled with whole genome sequences, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data sets have provided insights on the genes/proteins indispensable for initiation and maintenance of persistence, cross-talk with and/or sensing the host immune response, and finally the reactivation of persistent M. tuberculosis to a growing state. The review will focus on analysis of current state of M. tuberculosis genomic resources, host-pathogen interaction studies in the context of pathogen persistence, and the efforts made or required in the development and utilization of computational tools, models and metabolic network analyses to speed up the process of drug target discovery, particularly eradicating the dormant infections.