The findings could help fight the deadly disease, better diagnosis of the strain and understanding of the mechanisms involved in its resistance to drugs.
Doctors working for a government-sponsored research centre decoded and sequenced the strain in a week using technology developed in the United States for five million rand ($750,000).
Carl Montague, the health portfolio manager of Lifelab which funds the National Genomics Platform told AFP, "We have taken a sample of (XDR) TB from a Kwazulu-Natal patient and sequenced the entire genome of the strain of TB."
"(It) took us just over a week, using other technology it would have taken up to a year," he added.
Scientists looked at the mutations between the drug resistant form and drug sensitive form to see differences and search for biological mechanisms, such as which genes mutated and how can we use the knowledge to develop better diagnostics.
Lifelab Chief executive Blessed Okole said that the Extreme Drug Resitant TB (XDR) was first discovered last year in Kwazulu-Natal, one of the areas worst hit by AIDS in South Africa.
Three hundred people are known to have contracted it, 188 of who died. In one situation, all but one of a group of 53 people with the strain died within 25 days of diagnosis.
Currently, the sequence is now being analyzed and scientists hope to use it to develop a rapid test to diagnose TB. It could take up to ten years to find an effective drug but the technology could prove useful in probing other drug resistant diseases such as HIV.
About 330,000 South Africans have TB, and 6,000 have a multiple drug-resistant variant, officials said. To date, more than 300 cases have been identified, and at least 30 more are reported each month.
