Abstract
Resistance to pyrazinamide in Mycobacterium tuberculosis is usually associated with a reduction of pyrazinamidase activity caused by mutations in pncA, the pyrazinamidase coding gene. Pyrazinamidase is a hydrolase that converts pyrazinamide, the antituberculous drug against the latent stage, to the active compound, pyrazinoic acid. To better understand the relationship between pncA mutations and pyrazinamide resistance, it is necessary to analyze the distribution of pncA mutations from pyrazinamide resistant strains. We determined the distribution of Peruvian and globally reported pncA missense mutations from M. tuberculosis clinical isolates resistant to pyrazinamide. The distributions of the single amino acid substitutions were compared at the secondary structure domains level. The distribution of the Peruvian mutations followed a similar pattern as the mutations reported globally. A consensus clustering of mutations was observed in hot-spot regions located in the metal coordination site and to a lesser extent in the active site of the enzyme. The data was not able to reject the null hypothesis that both distributions are similar, suggesting that pncA mutations associated to pyrazinamide resistance in M. tuberculosis, follow a conserved pattern responsible to impair the pyrazinamidase activity.