Drug resistance to Mycobacterium tuberculosis: From the traditional Chinese view to modern systems biology

Abstract

The pathogen, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) is a well-evolved, organized pathogen that has developed drug resistance, specifically multidrug resistance (MDR) and extensive drug resistance (XDR). This review primarily summarizes the mechanisms of drug resistance by M. tuberculosis according to the traditional Chinese view. The traditional Chinese view of drug resistance includes: the physical barrier of the cell wall; mutations relating to current anti-TB agents; drug efflux pumps; and drug stress, including the SOS response systems, the mismatch repair systems and the toxin–antitoxin systems. In addition, this review addresses the integrated systems biology of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and interactomics. Development of the various levels of systems biology has enabled determination of the anatomy of bacteria. Finally, the current review proposes that further investigation regarding the population of individuals with a high drug metabolic speed is vital to further understand drug resistance in M. tuberculosis.

• Drug resistance
• Mycobacterium tuberculosis
• stress response
• systems biology
• traditional Chinese view

Declaration of interest

This work was supported by the Key Project Specialized for Infectious Diseases of the Chinese Ministry of Health (2013ZX10003009) and High-level Technical Personnel Training Project in Health of Beijing (2011-3-069).