Exploring the potential role of moonlighting function of the surface-associated proteins from Mycobacterium bovis BCG Moreau and Pasteur by comparative proteomic

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of major causes of death worldwide. Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) is the only licensed TB vaccine and its inability to protect against adult pulmonary TB can be due to genetic differences among strains described since the 1940s. In this work, we compared the proteomic profile of the surface-associated proteins from M. bovis BCG Moreau, the Brazilian vaccine strain, and the BCG Pasteur reference strain. The methodology used was 2D-gel electrophoresis combined with mass spectrometry techniques (MALDI-TOF/TOF). We identified 115 proteins. Of these, 24 proteins showed differential expression between the two BCG strains. Furthermore, 27 proteins previously described as displaying moonlighting function were identified, 8 of these proteins showed variation in abundance comparing BCG Moreau to Pasteur and 2 of them presented two different domain hits.