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Genome structure Mycobacterium tuberculosis has circular chromosomes of about 4,200,000 nucleotides long. The G+C content is about 65%. (13) The genome of M. tuberculosis was studied generally using the strain M. tuberculosis H37Rv . The genome contains about 4000 genes. Genes that code for lipid metabolism are a very important part of the bacterial genome, and 8% of the genome is involved in this activity. (7) The different species of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex show a 95-100% DNA relatedness based on studies of DNA homology, and the sequence of the 16S rRNA gene are exactly the same for all the species. So some scientists suggest that they should be grouped as a single species while others argue that they should be grouped as varieties or subspecies of M. tuberculosis . (2) Plasmids in M. tuberculosis are important in transferring virulence because genes on the plasmids are more easily transferred than genes located on the chromosome. One such 18kb plas