Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of tuberculosis(TB),which is still the leading cause of mortality from a single infectious disease worldwide.The development of novel anti-TB drugs and vaccines is severely hampered by the complicated and time-consuming genetic manipulation techniques for M.tuberculosis.Here,we harnessed an endogenous type Ⅲ-A CRISPR/Cas10 system of M.tuberculosis for efficient gene editing and RNA interference(RNAi).This simple and easy method only needs to transform a single mini-CRISPR array plasmid,thus avoiding the introduction of exogenous protein and minimizing proteotoxicity.We demonstrated that M.tuberculosis genes can be efficiently and specifically knocked in/out by this system as con-firmed by DNA high-throughput sequencing.This system was further applied to single-and multiple-gene RNAi.Moreover,we successfully performed genome-wide RNAi screening to identify M.tuberculosis genes regulating in vitro and intracellular growth.This system can be extensively used for exploring the functional genomics of M.tuberculosis and facilitate the development of novel anti-TB drugs and vaccines.

Objective: To identify regions of the brain affected during cognitive working memory during tasks to assess attention, planning and decision making among military aviation personnel who have chronic intermittent exposure to high altitude environment. Method: A case-control study was conducted in the Universiti Putra Malaysia among eight military personnel, four of whom had chronic intermittent exposure to high altitude training. They were divided into two groups, chronic intermittent exposure group (CE) (n=4) and a control group (n=4). They underwent a task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that utilised spatial working memory task to objectively evaluate the neural activation in response to the Tower of London paradigm. Each correct answer was given a score of one and the maximum achievable score was 100%. Results: A consecutive dichotomised group of CE (4/8) and control (4/8) of age-matched military aviation personnel with a mean age of 37.23±5.52 years; showed significant activation in the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG). This in turn was positively correlated with response accuracy. A significant difference in the response accuracy was noted among both the groups at p<0.05. Conclusion: At the minimum results of power analysis of this preliminary fMRI study, our group of aviation personnel who had chronic intermittent exposure to hypobaric hypoxic environment, did not have any significant decrease in cognitive function namely attention, decision-making and problem solving compared to controls during a working memory task