The Mycobacterium tuberculosis tm-RNA ssr is required for intracellular survival and resistance to nitric oxide

2^nd International Conference on Respiratory and Pulmonary Medicine

October 17-18, 2016 Chicago, USA

Mohammad A Alzohairy and James E Graham

Qassim University, Saudi Arabia
University of Louisville, USA

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Pulm Respir Med

Abstract :

A genome of almost 4,200 predicted genes encoding an abundance of readily recognized transcriptional regulatory factors functions to allow the tubercle bacillus to survive in different environments during infection and survive aerosol transmission to new host. Screening for bacterial RNAs produced in response to host interaction produced candidate lists where we noted ssr, annotated as small stable RNA. M. tuberculosis ssr encodes small stable tmRNA with both transfer and messenger function that is highly important to keep bacterial cell in fully operational state. We investigated the contribution of ssr to M. tuberculosis pathogenesis. Genetic DNA manipulations revealed that ssr-Rv3099c-smpB genes are indeed not essential for growth. An H37Rv ssr-Rv3099c-smpB mutant was greatly impaired intracellular survival and growth relative to H37Rv and Rvs2O strains. In addition, mutant strain was more sensitive to various in vitro stress conditions including heat, SDS treatment, sub-lethal concentration of translation specific antibiotic, and more interestingly to nitric oxide, which is along with reactive nitrogen intermediates represent an important mean through which macrophages partially control M. tuberculosis infection. Our findings indicate an important role of ssr-Rv3099c-smpB genes in M. tuberculosis pathogenesis and tolerance to various stress conditions.

Biography :

Email: dr.alzohairy@gmail.com