Portrait of a pathogen: A characterisation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its host using multi-dimensional proteomics.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a bacterial agent that causes the disease tuberculosis in human. Tuberculosis is still one of the leading causes of death by an infectious disease and has been so for thousands of years. In 2020, there was a 130 new tuberculosis cases per 100 000 and 1.2 million people have died as a direct consequence of infection by M. tuberculosis.The situation is especially desperate in countries such as South Africa, where there is a high burden and prevalence of drug resistant mycobacterial strains. It is thus important to further study this pathogen and gain a fundamental understanding of it in order to effectively combat the disease. M. tuberculosis is a dangerous and specialised lung pathogen with a small genome specifically evolved to survive within the hostile environment of a macrophage. The hallmark of tuberculosis infection is a phenomenon where the bacilli is surrounded by immune cells to form a granuloma. This harsh environment stimulates a competitive co-evolution between M. tuberculosis and humans where the bacilli becomes more specialised in both its genome and the expression of these genes. In all living cells proteins form the functional basis and thus the proteins are also responsible for all metabolic functions within the cell as well as its structure. Because of the unique evolution of M. tuberculosis the study of the unique features of its genome and proteome are important to elucidate the source of its success as a pathogen. By focussing research efforts on structures and functions of M. tuberculosis that are unique to the pathogenic mycoabacteria might provide insights into the pathogenicity of M. tuberculosis which can be exploited for better chemotherapies. The type VII secretion system of the mycobacteria presents such an unique characteristic of the pathogenic mycobacteria and is thus a prime candidate for intervention and study. This system is unique to the pathogenic mycobacteria and the ESX-5 system is recently evolved