M. tuberculosis-M. bovis transcriptional comparison

We used microarray hybridization to compare the total in vitro transcriptome of M. bovis and M. tuberculosis H37Rv. Our aim was to get a global view on the differences of gene expression between these pathogens as a mean to identify the genetic basis for their distinct phenotypes.Differential expression was detected in 258 genes, representing a 6% of the total genome. Of these, 13 genes were further confirmed by quantitative RT-PCR. Our findings provide new evidence concerning differences in gene expression between both pathogens, and confirm previous hypotheses inferred from genome comparisons and proteome analysis. Keywords: Comparative genomic hibridization Four independent biological replicates were analyzed for each strain, and one swap-dye experiment was included.