Identifying the fitness cost of rifampicin-resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis through RNAseq profiling.

The experiment was designed to infer the fitness cost of rifampicin-resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis through expression analysis. The approach relied on: 1. Tracking the expression changes occurring as a result of the rifampicin-resistance conferring mutation Ser450Leu in RpoB and subsequent gain of compensatory mutation Leu516Pro in RpoC. The hypothesis was that any cost-incurring expressional changes would be reversed in the presence of compensatory mutations. The strains in this set were described before here: PMID 22179134. 2. Comparing the impact of the same rifampicin-resistance mutation (RpoB Ser450Leu) in five different genetic backgrounds. Here the comparison was solely between RpoB Ser450Leu and their cognate drug susceptible wild type ancestor. One of the strain pairs is the same as in point 1. above.