Journal
TUBERCULOSIS
Volume 106, Issue -, Pages 106-117Publisher
CHURCHILL LIVINGSTONE
DOI: 10.1016/j.tube.2017.07.005
Keywords
lysX; Antimicrobial peptides; Resistance; Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Categories
Funding
- Mexican Institute for Social Security (IMSS) [FIS/IMSS/PROT/1490]
- Fundacion IMSS
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are mainly produced by epithelial cells and macrophages to eliminate infecting mycobacteria through direct antimicrobial activity and immunomodulation. Indeed, it has been described that this line of defense is essential to control infection. However, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) has developed mechanisms to avoid AMPs activity, for instance lysX adds lysine residues to surface phospholipids changing their net charge, leading to the repelling of the AMPs. In the present study, we determined that lysX gene is differentially expressed among Mtb strains. To achieve this aim we used several well-characterized Mtb clinical isolates, lysX mutated strains and reference strains. Our results showed that in the presence of AMPs, lysX expression increased significantly. Strains with higher lysX expression showed increased levels of intracellular survival in vivo and in vitro and induced more severe lesion related with pneumonia. Results showed that ability of Mtb to replicate intracellularly was directly correlated to the level of lysX expression showing that the amount of lysX produced by the bacterial cell is an important variable for the modulation of Mtb virulence. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available