Mycobacterial ethambutol responsive genes and implications in antibiotics resistance

Abstract

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis), the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), remains a formidable threat in mortality and morbidity worldwide. Ethambutol (EMB) is one of the first-line drugs regimens for TB treatment. Arabinosyl transferases are established targets of EMB, which is involved in the biosynthesis of arabinogalactan (AG) and lipoarabinomannan (LAM). Mutations among embCAB operon are responsible for around 70% clinical EMB resistant M. tuberculosis. In this review, we summarised other potential factors associated with EMB resistance via analysing whole genome, proteome and transcriptome of M. tuberculosis exposed to EMB. This will help to design better diagnosis of EMB resistance.

Keywords:

• Mycobacterium tuberculosis
• embCAB
• ethambutol (EMB)
• resistance
• arabinosyl transferases

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in NCBI at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and https://mycobrowser.epfl.ch.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Education Fund of Chongqing Medical and Pharmaceutical College [YGZJGWT1907], National Natural Science Foundation (Grant Numbers 81871182 and 81371851) and National Key R&D Plan [2016YFC0502304]. Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing Medical and Pharmaceutical College (ygz2020106).