Proliferation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis - NanoBiology Course 2021 - Monday Group

In this video students of the Maastricht Science Program NanoBiology Course 2021, show their explanation of the Proliferation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Using CellPAINT, UCFS Chimera and their creativity they explain the nanobiology of tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis (TB) is caused by a bacterium: Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is an important human pathogen: up to the current COVID19 pandemic, TB was the world's most deadly disease caused by a human pathogen. Whereas a virus is not a living thing and has a relatively simple genome - the virus SARS-CoV-2, for example, only codes for 29 proteins - mycobacteria are living prokaryotes with (in case of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis H37Rv) a genome that encodes for a total of 3993 proteins.

Tuberculosis (TB) infection happens in 4 stages: the initial macrophage response, the growth stage, the immune control stage, and the lung cavitation stage. Proliferation or rapid growth occurs both in stage 2 and 4. During these stages, mycobacteria have to replicate their genome, synthesise new protein, synthesise new cell walls, and have a highly active metabolism. Many of our current antibiotics act on these events. The most common antibiotics used to treat TB are isoniazid, rifampin, ethambutol, and pyrazinamide. Isoniazid an ethambutol interfere with cell wall synthesis, rifampin blocks the RNA polymerase, whereas pyrazinamide is thought to interfere with the cell metabolism.

Patients can become very ill of TB, in particular during stage 4, and, when left untreated, many will die. Throughout the 1600-1800s in Europe, TB caused 25% of all deaths. Isolating people and proper nutrition was the best TB medicine before antibiotics. TB sanatoriums, which existed until well after the second war, isolated patients from their family, provided fresh air, good food and medical care. Antibiotics can nowadays be used to fight TB, however, one has to take medication for at least 6 months to ensure that all mycobacteria are killed. Stopping the cure prematurely or skipping doses risks the bacteria becoming resistant. Drug-resistant mycobacteria require a longer course of treatment with different, and possibly more toxic, therapies. There are also forms of extreme-drug-resistant mycobacteria, for which no treatments are possible at all.

What are the different lines of antibiotics currently used to treat TB and what are their molecular mechanisms of how they work? What happens, at the molecular level, when mycobacteria become resistant? What is the risk that, one day, the world might face a new extreme-drug-resistant TB pandemic? As TB is an airborne pathogen and spreads quite similar as SARS-CoV-2, we now know too well what to do when such a new pandemic would announce itself. But maybe you could already think of better and newer antibiotics and vaccines beforehand?

Видео Proliferation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis - NanoBiology Course 2021 - Monday Group канала Maastricht4Imaging