Skamene E, Schurr E, Gros P
Division of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, Montreal General Hospital, Quebec, Canada.
Annu Rev Med. 1998;49:275-87. doi: 10.1146/annurev.med.49.1.275.
The scope of the tuberculosis (TB) epidemic in the world today is enormous, with about 30 million active cases. Current research into preventing the spread of TB is focused on development of new drugs to inactivate Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of TB, as well as on identifying the critical steps of host defense to infection with Mycobacteria, which might also yield therapeutic targets. Our infection genomics approach toward the latter strategy has been to isolate and characterize a mouse gene, Bcg (Nramp1), which controls natural susceptibility to infection with Mycobacteria, as well as Salmonella and Leishmania. Through comparative genomics, we have identified the homologous human NRAMP1 gene, alleles of which are now being used for tests of linkage with TB and leprosy.
当今世界结核病流行的范围极为广泛，约有3000万活动性病例。目前预防结核病传播的研究主要集中在开发新药以使结核分枝杆菌（结核病的病原体）失活，以及确定宿主抵御分枝杆菌感染的关键步骤，这也可能产生治疗靶点。我们针对后一种策略的感染基因组学方法是分离并鉴定一个小鼠基因Bcg（Nramp1），该基因控制对分枝杆菌、沙门氏菌和利什曼原虫感染的天然易感性。通过比较基因组学，我们鉴定出了同源的人类NRAMP1基因，其等位基因目前正用于与结核病和麻风病的连锁测试。
