Chen Yue, MacGilvary Nathan J, Tan Shumin
Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Current affiliation: Department of Molecular, Cell, and Cancer Biology, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States of America.
PLoS Genet. 2024 Jan 24;20(1):e1011143. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1011143. eCollection 2024 Jan.
Successful colonization of the host requires Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) to sense and respond coordinately to disparate environmental cues during infection and adapt its physiology. However, how Mtb response to environmental cues and the availability of key carbon sources may be integrated is poorly understood. Here, by exploiting a reporter-based genetic screen, we have unexpectedly found that overexpression of transcription factors involved in Mtb lipid metabolism altered the dampening effect of low environmental potassium concentrations ([K+]) on the pH response of Mtb. Cholesterol is a major carbon source for Mtb during infection, and transcriptional analyses revealed that Mtb response to acidic pH was augmented in the presence of cholesterol and vice versa. Strikingly, deletion of the putative lipid regulator mce3R had little effect on Mtb transcriptional response to acidic pH or cholesterol individually, but resulted specifically in loss of cholesterol response augmentation in the simultaneous presence of acidic pH. Similarly, while mce3R deletion had little effect on Mtb response to low environmental [K+] alone, augmentation of the low [K+] response by the simultaneous presence of cholesterol was lost in the mutant. Finally, a mce3R deletion mutant was attenuated for growth in foamy macrophages and for colonization in a murine infection model that recapitulates caseous necrotic lesions and the presence of foamy macrophages. These findings reveal the critical coordination between Mtb response to environmental cues and cholesterol, a vital carbon source, and establishes Mce3R as a transcription factor that crucially serves to integrate these signals.
结核分枝杆菌(Mtb)要成功定殖于宿主体内,就需要在感染过程中感知并协调应对不同的环境信号,进而调整自身生理状态。然而,目前对于Mtb如何响应环境信号以及关键碳源的可用性之间的整合机制却知之甚少。在此,我们利用基于报告基因的遗传筛选方法,意外地发现参与Mtb脂质代谢的转录因子过表达改变了低环境钾离子浓度([K+])对Mtb pH响应的抑制作用。胆固醇是Mtb感染期间的主要碳源,转录分析表明,在有胆固醇存在的情况下,Mtb对酸性pH的响应增强,反之亦然。引人注目的是,假定的脂质调节因子mce3R的缺失对Mtb单独对酸性pH或胆固醇的转录响应影响不大,但在酸性pH同时存在时,却导致胆固醇响应增强的特异性丧失。同样,虽然mce3R缺失单独对Mtb对低环境[K+]的响应影响不大,但在突变体中,胆固醇同时存在时低[K+]响应的增强作用丧失。最后,mce3R缺失突变体在泡沫巨噬细胞中的生长以及在模拟干酪样坏死病变和泡沫巨噬细胞存在的小鼠感染模型中的定殖能力均减弱。这些发现揭示了Mtb对环境信号和重要碳源胆固醇的响应之间的关键协调作用,并确立了Mce3R作为一种关键的转录因子,它在整合这些信号中起着至关重要的作用。