Effect of phenylalanine-rich peptide on growth and survival of Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv (Mtb). Mycobacterium tuberculosis

During our efforts to isolate potantial binding partners of Esat6, we isolated few peptides rich in phenylalanine residues that strongly interacted with Esat6. All peptides were less than fifty amino acids in length, One of them, Hcl1, when expressed in mycobacteria showed significant retardation in growth and survival within macrophages. Microarray analysis showed that Hcl1 affects a host of genes and cellular pathways. Overall design: RNA was isolated from exponentially growing mycobacteria containing either plasmid vector pVV16 encoding peptide or vector pVV16 alone. Comparisons were made between Experimental (Mtb/Hcl1) and control (Mtb/pVV16) samples by extracting raw intensity values from multiple arrays.