TB Dictionary

Global TB Dictionary
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Along with Alberto Garcia-Basteiro and many others, Marcel co-piloted the creation and editing of the Global TB Dictionary, a consensus TB dictionary to unify the language we speak.

Since its launch in 2024, the TB Dictionary has had 23,000 views by 2,900 total users.

View the Global TB Dictionary  Read about dictionary in The Lancet

Alberto L Garcia-Basteiro, Joanna Ehrlich, Maryline Bonnet, Marianne Calnan, Stephen M Graham, Sabine Hermans, Adriana Jarrett, Rhoda Lewa, Anna Mandalakas, Leonardo Martinez, Giovanni Battista Migliori, Catherine WM Ong, Larissa Otero, Molebogeng Xheedha Rangaka, Mario CB Raviglione, Barbara Seaworth, Willy Ssengooba, Grant Theron, Anete Trajman, Marcel A Behr. A Global Tuberculosis Dictionary: unified terms and definitions for the field of tuberculosis. Lancet Global Health, The, 2024-05-01, Volume 12, Issue 5, Pages e737-e739, Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license

BCG strains that are mono-resistant to drugs used for TB

Sarah Danchuk has engineered a panel of recombinant BCG strains that are mono-resistant to drugs used for TB. Strains available by request or also deposited at the BCCM/ITM Mycobacteria collection.

Read more in Science  View BCCM/ITM Mycobacteria collection

Danchuk S, McIntosh F, Jamieson FB, May K, Behr MA. Bacillus Calmette-Guérin strains with defined resistance mutations: a new tool for TB lab quality control. Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 2020 Mar; 26(3): 384.e5-384.e8 

The rBCG strains have been used in Sarah N Danchuk, Ori E Solomon, Thomas Andreas Kohl, Viola Dreyer, Ivan Barilar, Christian Utpatel, Stefan Niemann, Dick van Soolingen, Richard Anthony, Jakko van Ingen, Joy S Michael, Marcel A Behr. Challenging the gold standard: the limitations of molecular assays for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis heteroresistance. Thorax. 2024 Jun 14;79(7):670-675. doi: 10.1136/thorax-2023-220202.

Ancestral sequence for the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex

Luke Harrison has imputed the ancestral sequence for the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, called MTBC 0. The sequence can also be accessed via Mycobrowser.

Read more in Microbiology Research  Access Mycobrowser

Harrison LB, Kapur V, Behr MA. An imputed ancestral reference genome for the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex better captures structural genomic diversity for reference-based alignment workflows. Microb Genom. 2024 Jan;10(1):001165. doi: 10.1099/mgen.0.001165.PMID: 38175684

Previous work

Graphical user interface for Genomic Sequence Comparison

Screengrab of MycoHit
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
MycoHit is a JAVA application

This program serves to perform BLAST searches then parses the TBLASTN result files with PERL scripts in order to select the highest score for each protein. Obtained data, including the score, are then stored on a local MYSQL database. It was first published in this article:

Veyrier F, Pletzer D, Turenne C, Behr MA. Phylogenetic detection of horizontal gene transfer during the step-wise genesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. BMC Evol Biol. 2009 Aug 10;9:196. doi: 10.1186/1471-2148-9-196.

Contact

Contact lynn.derycapes [at] mail.mcgill.ca (Lynn Dery Capes) if you wish to receive a zipped copy of the files and instructions for this application.