By using a computer model to understand the adaptions of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the pathogen that causes tuberculosis, researchers at ISB have identified a network within Mtb that allows it to tolerate and resist drug therapies. This work is published in Cell Reports.
Tuberculosis (TB) is the world’s second leading infectious disease killer after COVID-19. Drug resistance to TB is a public health crisis. ISB researchers have developed algorithms to predict the efficacy of drugs in treating Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), the causative agent for TB. These research findings were published in the journal Cell Reports Methods.
ISB researchers Dr. Nitin Baliga, Dr. Eliza Peterson and Dr. Vivek Srinivas have developed a new cell sorting technology, called PerSort, that isolates and characterizes dormant persisters that exist in cultures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes tuberculosis.
ISB researchers have unveiled new insights on how Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes tuberculosis, enters and exits a dormant state in human hosts. About a quarter of the world’s population has latent TB, so these important findings will enable and accelerate the discovery of more effective TB drugs.
Researchers at ISB reported a novel method, Path-seq, to profile expression of all MTB genes within infected mice. This study presents the most comprehensive transcriptome profiling of MTB from in vivo infection and a major technical advancement for studying any host-pathogen interaction.
Amy Zamora joined ISB in August as a Systems Research Scholar. The Systems Research Scholars Program provides recent college undergraduates a springboard to become the next generation’s pioneers of interdisciplinary scientific research. In this Q&A, Zamora describes her experiences at ISB, research interests, future aspirations, and much more.
Dr. Eliza Peterson, a senior research scientist who studies tuberculosis (TB) in the Institute for Systems Biology’s Baliga Lab, has been recognized by the University of Washington’s Tuberculosis Research and Training Center with a TB Junior Investigator Award.
NIH Research Matters published an article on our tuberculosis paper. “The incredibly large number of possible drug combinations taken together with the difficulty of growing Mtb in the laboratory make discovery of effective combination therapy extremely challenging,” Dr. Nitin Baliga says. “We hope that our systems-based strategy will accelerate TB drug discovery by helping researchers prioritize combinations that are more likely to be effective.” READ THE ARTICLE
The Baliga Lab and colleagues at Center for Infectious Disease Research published (online in advance of print) this landmark study today in the journal Nature Microbiology: Seattle researchers created a genetic blueprint of the cunning tuberculosis bacteria, then used it to predict and rank potential drug targets 3 Bullets: Researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology and Center for Infectious Disease Research have deciphered how the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis…
3 Bullets: The disease progression of tuberculosis is extremely complex and it’s poorly understood. ISB and Seattle BioMed researchers have made an important step by developing a comprehensive map of gene regulation in tuberculosis. A resulting open-access web portal offers any scientist the ability to mine the collected data. By ISBUSA Tuberculosis (TB) remains a top global health threat due to its remarkable complexity in disease progression. To help understand…
The journal “Trends in Microbiology” recently published a spotlight article on a tuberculosis research collaboration between scientists at Institute for Systems Biology and Seattle BioMed. The paper “The DNA-binding network of Mycobacterium tuberculosis” was published in the journal “Nature Communications” (Jan. 12, 2015): “MTB employs about 200 different molecular switches to sense and respond to the shifting, hostile landscape of the host. To identify and understand the intertwining gene regulatory…
PBS: American Experience Film “The Forgotten Plague” BY ISBUSA The measles outbreak and subsequent fueling of the anti-vaccination debate have monopolized headlines recently. But there’s a “plague” that causes an estimated 1.3 million deaths per year that researchers, including those at Institute for Systems Biology, are dedicated to tackling: tuberculosis. On Tuesday, Feb. 10, PBS will feature an “American Experience” film “The Forgotten Plague” on the history of tuberculosis and…
3 Bullets: Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infects more than 1.5 billion people worldwide partly due to its ability to sense and adapt to the broad range of hostile environments that exist within hosts. To study how MTB controls its responses at a molecular level, ISB researchers and their collaborators at Seattle Biomed perturbed almost all MTB transcription factor regulators and identified the affected genes. This comprehensive map of molecular switches in…
