Monitoring host response to Mycobacterium Tuberculosis infection

Abstract

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is a widespread pathogenic bacterial species which causes 1.5 million people death every year in the world (1-3). Moreover, M. tuberculosis infected about one third of world population, 5-10% of which developed acute clinical disease (4). To find a cure for this pathogen we need to understand how Mtb infects human beings and how the host environment responds to Mtb infection. Through lipid metabolism, Mtb can manipulate host gene expression to benefit its own sustention. Among those lipids, Trehalose 6,6'-dimycolate (TDM) is a cell wall glycolipid is proved to induce host response which is most similar to Mtb infection (6, 7). Therefore, we built reporter cell lines that can sense TDM induction, enabling us to monitor the progression by examing the GFP and luciferase expression.