Mycobacterium tuberculosis and human macrophage: The bacillus with ?environment-sensing?

To summarize, let's say that some observations show that M. tuberculosis might be able to ?sense? the environment in which its replication occurs. In fact, it seems that it is capable to modulate its gene expression in the course of infection, avoiding to transcribe genes encoding the proteins that display immunodominant epitopes. It is, in many cases, apparently able to find a balance between its own replication and host survival. It is also found in a latency state, when the host environment is particularly ?hostile? for its survival. Finally, this editorial proposes the idea that studying the behaviour of MTB at the very same moment in which it needs to adapt its metabolism to the host environment will provide us with new information for building up a post-exposure vaccine against tuberculosis.