Tuberculosis infection continues to be a world-wide health problem. This situation has recently been greatly exacerbated by the emergence of multi-drug resistant strains of M. tuberculosis and the international AIDS epidemic. It has thus become increasingly important that effective vaccines against and reliable diagnostic reagents for M. tuberculosis be produced.
This application is a U.S. national stage entry of international application number PCT/US00/12257 filed May 4, 2000, which claims the benefit of U.S. provisional application No. 60/132,505, the disclosures of which are each incorporated herein by reference in their entireties. The disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 6,087,163 is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.