Identification of a specific Mycobacterium tuberculosis protein able to activate T lymphocytes.

The recent advances in the field of immunology and molecular biology allow to consider not distant the identification of protective antigens to be used in new prophilactic and diagnostic tools. In our laboratory we have analysed a M. tuberculosis expression library by murine monoclonal antibodies, human sera and human T lymphocytes. We have identified a 35 Kd protein present only on the M. tuberculosis complex (M. tuberculosis, M. bovis, M. africanum). This 35 Kd protein is also detected, by immunohistological analysis, inside the alveolar macrophage of pulmonary tuberculosis patients. Both recombinant beta-galactosidase and MS2 polymerase-fused proteins have been produced and used to perform western blotting and T cell proliferation assay. As the cloned fragment contains an internal EcoRI restriction site, it was possible to identify two fragments of 1.7 and 2.2 kb respectively. Southern blot analysis showed that both the fragments hibridized with the genomic DNA from M. tuberculosis complex but not with the DNA from other mycobacterial isolates from 12 pulmonary tuberculous patients hibridized with the 1.7 kb fragment. The possible use of this insert for the molecular diagnosis of tuberculosis is under investigation.