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9.26 Mycobacterium leprae is an intracellular bacterium that is the causative agent of leprosy, a chronic disease that infects the skin, nerves, and mucous membranes. It has not been possible to grow the bacterium in a culture medium, unlike its relative Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causativeagent of tuberculosis (TB). M. tuberculosis can also grow intracellularly, as in the lungs it is taken up by alveolar macrophages and can multiply unchecked. The following table compares the genomes of these two organisms. M. leprae-M. tuberculosis:*Genome size (Mb): 3.27 -4.41*Percent of genome encodingproteins: 49.5 -90.8*Protein-coding genes (ORFs): - - 1,604- 3,959*Pseudogenes: 1,116- 6*Gene density (bp per gene): - - 2,037- 1,114*Average gene length: - 1,011-1,012a. Pseudogenes are nucleotide sequences that no longer produce functional gene products because they have accumulated inactivating mutations. Why might M. leprae have many more pseudogenes than M. tuberculosis?b. What analyses would you perform to understand how these two bacteria differ in terms of the enzymatic functions they can carry out?c. How might your analyses help you understand how to culture M. leprae?

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