No abstract

In Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the sensor kinases DosT and DosS activate the transcriptional regulator DosR, resulting in the induction of the DosR regulon, which is important for anaerobic survival and perhaps latent infection. The individual and collective roles of these sensors have been postulated biochemically, but their roles in vivo have remained unclear. This work demonstrates distinct and additive roles for each sensor during anaerobic dormancy. Both sensors are necessary for wild-type levels of DosR regulon induction, and concomitantly, full induction of the regulon is required for wild-type anaerobic survival. In the anaerobic model, DosT plays an early role, responding to hypoxia. DosT then induces the regulon and with it DosS, which sustains and further induces the regulon. DosT then loses its functionality as oxygen becomes limited, and DosS alone maintains induction of the genes from that point forward. Thus, M. tuberculosis has evolved a system whereby it responds to hypoxic conditions in a stepwise fashion as it enters an anaerobic state.

The DosR regulon in Mycobacterium tuberculosis is involved in respiration-limiting conditions, its induction is controlled by two histidine kinases, DosS and DosT, and recent experimental evidence indicates DosS senses either molecular oxygen or a redox change. Under aerobic conditions, induction of the DosR regulon by DosS, but not DosT, was observed after the addition of ascorbate, a powerful cytochrome c reductant, demonstrating that DosS responds to a redox signal even in the presence of high oxygen tension. During hypoxic conditions, regulon induction was attenuated by treatment with compounds that occluded electron flow into the menaquinone pool or decreased the size of the menaquinone pool itself. Increased regulon expression during hypoxia was observed when exogenous menaquinone was added, demonstrating that the menaquinone pool is a limiting factor in regulon induction. Taken together, these data demonstrate that a reduced menaquinone pool directly or indirectly triggers induction of the DosR regulon via DosS. Biochemical analysis of menaquinones upon entry into hypoxic/anaerobic conditions demonstrated the disappearance of the unsaturated species and low-level maintenance of the mono-saturated menaquinone. Relative to the unsaturated form, an analog of the saturated form is better able to induce signaling via DosS and rescue inhibition of menaquinone synthesis and is less toxic. The menaquinone pool is central to the electron transport system (ETS) and therefore provides a mechanistic link between the respiratory state of the bacilli and DosS signaling. Although this report demonstrates that DosS responds to a reduced ETS, it does not rule out a role for oxygen in silencing signaling.Mycobacteria are strict aerobes, but Mycobacterium tuberculosis encounters microaerobic to anaerobic environments during the course of infection. Oxygen-limited microenvironments occur in mature granulomas, which are known to be avascular, inflammatory, and necrotic (1,5,20,40,56). Recent reports have detected mycobacterial DNA in visibly normal lung tissue (17), as well as adipose tissue (32). Interestingly, adipose tissue has been associated with hypoxia as well as the presence of nitric oxide (NO), both of which inhibit respiration (38,51,57,60). Further, M. tuberculosis is able to survive for long periods of time in a nonreplicating and nonrespiring state (15, 55).The DosR regulon is expressed in response to hypoxia, NO, and carbon monoxide (CO) and is thought to be important for early adaptation to these stimuli as well as long-term survival in the host (2,25,26,46,47,53,58). Despite induction by other gases, the presence of oxygen itself inhibits induction of the regulon (26,41,43,48). The DosR regulon is regulated by the response regulator DosR (DevR; Rv3133c) and was recently shown to be positively regulated by PhoP (Rv0757) to a basal level during aerobic growth (16). DosR is activated by two sensor histidine kinases, DosT (Rv2027c) and DosS (DevS; Rv3132c). The activation of DosR occurs through autophosphorylatio...

The role of gut microbiomes as important regulators of mammalian health is increasingly recognized, although feline and canine gut microbiomes remain poorly characterized. In this proof-of-concept study, we assessed the utility of a direct-to-consumer approach to executing pet microbiome studies. We characterized the gut microbiomes of 238 pets (46 cats and 192 dogs) by generating~11 million merged reads that were mapped to the V4 region of 16S ribosomal RNA gene at a sequencing depth of 45,806 (±22,325) reads per sample. Analyses of these reads revealed that both feline and canine gut microbiomes are dominated by three major phyla, namely Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, and Bacteroides and that alpha diversity is higher in the feline gut. In addition to interspecies differences between the feline and canine gut, we also detected appreciable intraspecies bacterial variation within the canine population. While the dogs in this dataset could be assigned to three distinct clusters based on their gut microbiome, no clustering was observed within the feline population. Integration of additional data obtained from survey questionnaires revealed that geography and body weight may be associated with canine gut microbiome composition. Furthermore, we found that both the inter and intraspecies differences are more pronounced at finer taxonomic levels, indicating that strain-level investigations may be necessary in the future. This study demonstrates that the direct-to-consumer approach overcomes existing limitations in pet microbiome research, for example, it allows collection of large numbers of pet samples. The direct-to-consumer approach has proven successful in human genomics as well as human microbiomics and this study demonstrates that by building partnerships with an engaged general public this approach can also propel the field of pet microbiomics forward.

Since the discovery of antibiotics, mortality due to bacterial infection has decreased dramatically. However, infections from difficult to treat bacteria such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant pathogens have been on the rise. An understanding of the cascade of events that leads to cell death downstream of specific drug-target interactions is not well understood. We have discovered that killing by several classes of antibiotics was stopped by maintaining pH balance within the bacterial cell, consistent with a shared mechanism of antibiotic killing. Our findings suggest a mechanism of antibiotic killing that stems from the antibiotic’s ability to increase the pH within bacterial cells by disrupting proton entry without affecting proton pumping out of cells. Knowledge of the core mechanism necessary for antibiotic killing could have a significant impact on the development of new lethal antibiotics and for the treatment of recalcitrant and drug-resistant pathogens.