Elucidating the mechanism of antimicrobial resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis using gene interaction networks.

ABSTRACT

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in microorganisms is an urgent global health threat. AMR of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. It is of great importance to underpin the resistance pathways involved in the mechanisms of AMR and identify the genes that are directly involved in AMR. The focus of the current study was the bacteria M. tuberculosis, which carries AMR genes that give resistance that lead to multidrug resistance. We, therefore, built a network of 43 genes and examined for potential gene-gene interactions. Then we performed a clustering analysis and identified three closely related clusters that could be involved in multidrug resistance mechanisms. Through the bioinformatics pipeline, we consistently identified six-hub genes (dnaN, polA, ftsZ, alr, ftsQ, and murC) that demonstrated the highest number of interactions within the clustering analysis. This study sheds light on the multidrug resistance of MTB and provides a protocol for discovering genes that might be involved in multidrug resistance, which will improve the treatment of resistant strains of TB.