 Ramakrishnan and her group tackled the problem of drug tolerance in tuberculosis, and found a drug that inhibits the development of resistance to the standard drugs used to treat the disease.Ramakrishnan later exploited the zebrafish to study leprosy, another devastating disease with morbid neurological consequences.She showed that a "Mycobacterium leprae" lipid causes nerve damage by inciting abnormal responses in the macrophages.