Computational biology in anti-tuberculosis drug discovery.

The resurgence of drug resistant tuberculosis (TB) is a major global healthcare problem. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), TB's causative agent, evades the host immune system and drug regimes by entering prolonged periods of nonproliferation or dormancy. The identification of genes essential to the bacterium in its dormancy phase infections is a key strategy in the development of new anti-TB therapeutics.

Gene descent, duplication, and horizontal transfer in the evolution of glutamyl- and glutaminyl-tRNA synthetases.

In translation, separate aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases attach the 20 different amino acids to their cognate tRNAs, with the exception of glutamine. Eukaryotes and some bacteria employ a specific glutaminyl-tRNA synthetase (GlnRS) which other Bacteria, the Archaea (archaebacteria), and organelles apparently lack. Instead, tRNA(Gln) is initially acylated with glutamate by glutamyl-tRNA synthetase (GluRS), then the glutamate moiety is transamidated to glutamine.