IF DOCTORS do not find a way to deal with drug-resistant tuberculosis soon, the scourge of the 19th century could terrorise 21st century society. But American scientists think they have the answer. They have tricked mycobacteria - a group that includes the microorganism responsible for TB - into gobbling up genetic material which disables them.
For years, researchers have realised that "antisense" RNA could cripple pathogens like Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Antisense RNA is designed so that its sequence of nucleotides binds to a particular messenger RNA molecule - the intermediate step between DNA and the protein it encodes - blocking the protein's production. But researchers have been unable to persuade the antisense RNA to cross the unusually thick cell walls which envelope the mycobacteria.
Eliezer Rapaport and his colleagues at the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, have solved the problem by linking the antisense RNA to one of ...
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