AN important breakthrough has been made in the battle against TB in cattle.

And the research indicates that thousands of years ago it may have been man who gave the disease to cattle.

The sequence of the entire genome of the organism that causes bovine tuberculosis has been determined in a collaborative project between the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (UK), the Institut Pasteur (France), and the Pathogen Genome Sequencing Unit at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (UK).

This development is seen as a major step forward in the long-term search for a vaccine against bovine TB and more rapid diagnostic testing.

Dr Glyn Hewinson, leader of the project at VLA said: "This is a great day for research into bovine tuberculosis. Our challenge now is to use this wealth of information as a springboard to develop the tools that are so desperately needed to eradicate this devastating disease."

Animal Health Minister Elliot Morley said: "Bovine TB is a major and growing problem for livestock farmers. It can also affect humans, although such infections are now rare in the UK."

DEFRA spends around £12m a year on research into bovine TB and the genome work has cost more than £1m including £175,000 from the Wellcome Trust.

The sequencing project revealed that the genome of M bovis is greater than 99.9pc identical to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of human TB, which kills over 2m people a year.

In the past it was believed that the human tubercle bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, was derived from M bovis due to the bovine bacillus crossing the species barrier into man at the time of the domestication of cattle 10,000-15,000 years ago.

However, the genome sequence of M. bovis has revealed that this is unlikely to be the case. Since the M bovis genome is smaller than that of M tuberculosis, it is more likely that man gave tuberculosis to cattle or that the two organisms evolved separately from a common ancestor.

The incidence of TB in cattle has been rising since 1990 and in 2000, more than 8,000 cattle were slaughtered because of the disease.

Updated: 11:53 Thursday, March 21, 2002