Division-cycle in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a prototrophic and metabolically flexible bacterium. The microorganism kills approximately 2 million people each year and is thought to latently infect one third of the world's population. The success of M. tuberculosis as a pathogen is attributed to its extraordinary capacity to adapt to environmental changes throughout the course of infection. Today, based on various in vitro and in vivo models, the researches agreed to consider M. tuberculosis as a two-phase microorganism which can appear either in its metabolically active acid fast or in its inactive forms. It is the purpose of this review to discuss and outline the in-depth understanding of the basic biology of cell division in M. tuberculosis. (C) 2012 Asian-African Society for Mycobacteriology. All rights reserved.