Publication Date:
2000-05-29
Description:
Pathogenic mycobacteria, including the agent of tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, must replicate in macrophages for long-term persistence within their niche during chronic infection: organized collections of macrophages and lymphocytes called granulomas. We identified several genes preferentially expressed when Mycobacterium marinum, the cause of fish and amphibian tuberculosis, resides in host granulomas and/or macrophages. Two were homologs of M. tuberculosis PE/PE-PGRS genes, a family encoding numerous repetitive glycine-rich proteins of unknown function. Mutation of two PE-PGRS genes produced M. marinum strains incapable of replication in macrophages and with decreased persistence in granulomas. Our results establish a direct role in virulence for some PE-PGRS proteins.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Ramakrishnan, L -- Federspiel, N A -- Falkow, S -- AI 32396/AI/NIAID NIH HHS/ -- K08 AI 01400/AI/NIAID NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2000 May 26;288(5470):1436-9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. lalitar@cmgm.stanford.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10827956" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Bacterial Proteins/chemistry/*genetics
;
Cells, Cultured
;
Disease Models, Animal
;
Gene Expression Profiling
;
Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial
;
Genes, Bacterial
;
Glycine/analysis
;
Granuloma/*microbiology/pathology
;
Humans
;
Macrophages/*microbiology
;
Mutation
;
Mycobacterium Infections, Nontuberculous/*microbiology/pathology
;
Mycobacterium marinum/*genetics/growth & development/*pathogenicity
;
Mycobacterium tuberculosis/genetics/pathogenicity
;
Promoter Regions, Genetic
;
Rana pipiens
;
Tuberculosis/microbiology
;
Virulence
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
