Department of Pharmacological Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2012;7(1):e29266. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029266. Epub 2012 Jan 18.
Research on the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) would benefit from novel tools for regulated gene expression. Here we describe the characterization and application of a synthetic riboswitch-based system, which comprises a mycobacterial promoter for transcriptional control and a riboswitch for translational control. The system was used to induce and repress heterologous protein overexpression reversibly, to create a conditional gene knockdown, and to control gene expression in a macrophage infection model. Unlike existing systems for controlling gene expression in Mtb, the riboswitch does not require the co-expression of any accessory proteins: all of the regulatory machinery is encoded by a short DNA segment directly upstream of the target gene. The inducible riboswitch platform has the potential to be a powerful general strategy for creating customized gene regulation systems in Mtb.
对人类病原体结核分枝杆菌（Mtb）的研究将受益于新型调控基因表达的工具。在这里，我们描述了一种基于合成核糖体开关的系统的特征和应用，该系统由转录控制的分枝杆菌启动子和翻译控制的核糖体开关组成。该系统用于可逆诱导和抑制异源蛋白的过表达，创建条件性基因敲低，并控制巨噬细胞感染模型中的基因表达。与现有的 Mtb 基因表达调控系统不同，核糖体开关不需要共表达任何辅助蛋白：所有调控机制都由目标基因上游的一小段 DNA 直接编码。诱导型核糖体开关平台有可能成为在 Mtb 中创建定制基因调控系统的强大通用策略。
