Tuberculosis is one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases and now, a team of scientists has discovered a fundamental flaw in a long-standing model of how bacteria control gene expression that can form the base for innovative strategies to combat tuberculosis and other bacterial infections, an official statement said on Thursday. 

Scientists believed that a protein called ‘σ factor’ binds RNA polymerase, initiates bacterial transcription and is then released once the enzyme begins elongating RNA.