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© Clifton E. Barry III, Ph.D., NIAID, NIH.
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Publication : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Evolutionary history of tuberculosis shaped by conserved mutations in the PhoPR virulence regulator

Scientific Fields
Diseases
Organisms
Applications
Technique

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - 21 Jul 2014

Gonzalo-Asensio J, Malaga W, Pawlik A, Astarie-Dequeker C, Passemar C, Moreau F, Laval F, Daffé M, Martin C, Brosch R, Guilhot C

Link to Pubmed [PMID] – 25049399

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2014 Aug;111(31):11491-6

Although the bovine tuberculosis (TB) agent, Mycobacterium bovis, may infect humans and cause disease, long-term epidemiological data indicate that humans represent a spill-over host in which infection with M. bovis is not self-maintaining. Indeed, human-to-human transmission of M. bovis strains and other members of the animal lineage of the tubercle bacilli is very rare. Here, we report on three mutations affecting the two-component virulence regulation system PhoP/PhoR (PhoPR) in M. bovis and in the closely linked Mycobacterium africanum lineage 6 (L6) that likely account for this discrepancy. Genetic transfer of these mutations into the human TB agent, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, resulted in down-regulation of the PhoP regulon, with loss of biologically active lipids, reduced secretion of the 6-kDa early antigenic target (ESAT-6), and lower virulence. Remarkably, the deleterious effects of the phoPR mutations were partly compensated by a deletion, specific to the animal-adapted and M. africanum L6 lineages, that restores ESAT-6 secretion by a PhoPR-independent mechanism. Similarly, we also observed that insertion of an IS6110 element upstream of the phoPR locus may completely revert the phoPR-bovis-associated fitness loss, which is the case for an exceptional M. bovis human outbreak strain from Spain. Our findings ultimately explain the long-term epidemiological data, suggesting that M. bovis and related phoPR-mutated strains pose a lower risk for progression to overt human TB, with major impact on the evolutionary history of TB.