Mycobacterium bovis transcriptional response to nitric oxide

We used microarray hybridization to analyze the expression pattern of M. bovis after exposure to nitric oxide. In M. tuberculosis, this treatment has been shown to induce a response similar to the hypoxic stress. Results showed the up-regulation of 51 genes belonging to the DosR regulon. The most remarkable difference with M. tuberculosis was the lack of expression of narX and narK2 in M. bovis, both genes related to survival during hypoxic stress. We further confirm this by qRT-PCR and also explore differential activity at promoter level. Four independent biological replicates were analyzed for each condition, and two dye-swap experiments were included.