Poly-L-glutamate/glutamine synthesis in the cell wall of Mycobacterium bovisis regulated in response to nitrogen availability

BMC Microbiology

Research Article

Deeksha Tripathi¹  Harish Chandra¹  Rakesh Bhatnagar² 

[1] Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering Laboratory, School of Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 110067, New Delhi, India;Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering Laboratory, School of Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 110067, New Delhi, India;Mailing address: School of Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 110067, New Delhi, India;

关键词: Mycobacterium bovis;    Mycobacterium smegmatis;    Glutamine synthetase;    Poly-L-glutamine/glutamate;    Biofilm;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2180-13-226

 received in 2013-08-15, accepted in 2013-10-08,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe cell wall of pathogenic mycobacteria is known to possess poly-L-glutamine (PLG) layer. PLG synthesis has been directly linked to glutamine synthetase (GS) enzyme. glnA1 gene encodes for GS enzyme in mycobacteria. PLG layer is absent in cell wall of avirulent Mycobacterium smegmatis, although M. smegmatis strain expressing GS enzyme of pathogenic mycobacteria can synthesize PLG layer in the cell wall. The role of GS enzyme has been extensively studied in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, however, little is known about GS enzyme in other mycobacterial species. Mycobacterium bovis, as an intracellular pathogen encounters nitrogen stress inside macrophages, thus it has developed nitrogen assimilatory pathways to survive in adverse conditions. We have investigated the expression and activity of M. bovis GS in response to nitrogen availability and effect on synthesis of PLG layer in the cell wall. M. smegmatis was used as a model to study the behaviour of glnA1 locus of M. bovis.ResultsWe observed that GS expression and activity decreased significantly in high nitrogen grown conditions. In high nitrogen conditions, the amount of PLG in cell wall was drastically reduced (below detectable limits) as compared to low nitrogen condition in M. bovis and in M. smegmatis strain complemented with M. bovis glnA1. Additionally, biofilm formation by M. smegmatis strain complemented with M. bovis glnA1 was increased than the wild type M. smegmatis strain.ConclusionsThe physiological regulation of GS in M. bovis was found to be similar to that reported in other mycobacteria but this data revealed that PLG synthesis in the cell wall of pathogenic mycobacteria occurs only in nitrogen limiting conditions and on the contrary high nitrogen conditions inhibit PLG synthesis. This indicates that PLG synthesis may be a form of nitrogen assimilatory pathway during ammonium starvation in virulent mycobacteria. Also, we have found that M. smegmatis complemented with M. bovis glnA1 was more efficient in biofilm formation than the wild type strain. This indicates that PLG layer favors biofilm formation. This study demonstrate that the nitrogen availability not only regulates GS expression and activity in M. bovis but also affects cell surface properties by modulating synthesis of PLG.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Tripathi et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.