When intracelluar pathogens enter the host macrophages where in addition to oxidative and antibiotic mechanisms of antimicrobial activity, nutrients are deprived. Human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis is one of macrophage parasitisms, which can replicate and persist for decades in dormancy state in virulent environments. It is very successful in escaping the killing mechanisms of macrophage. Molybdenum (Mo) enzymes involve in the global carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen cycles by catalyzing important redox reactions. There are several Mo enzymes in mycobacteria and they exert several important physiological functions, such as dormancy regulation, the metabolism of energy sources, and nitrogen source. Pterin-based Mo cofactor (Moco) is the common cofactor of the Mo enzymes in mycobacteria but the cofactor biosynthesis is nearly an untapped area. The present article discusses the physiological function of Mo enzymes and the structural feature of the genes coding for Moco biosynthesis enzymes in mycobacteria.

A generalized Fisher equation (GFE) relates the time derivative of the average of the intrinsic rate of growth to its variance. The exact mathematical result of the GFE has been widely used in population dynamics and genetics, where it originated. Many researchers have studied the numerical solutions of the GFE, up to now. In this paper, we introduce an element-free Galerkin (EFG) method based on the moving least-square approximation to approximate positive solutions of the GFE from population dynamics. Compared with other numerical methods, the EFG method for the GFE needs only scattered nodes instead of meshing the domain of the problem. The Galerkin weak form is used to obtain the discrete equations, and the essential boundary conditions are enforced by the penalty method. In comparison with the traditional method, numerical solutions show that the new method has higher accuracy and better convergence. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.