In silico secretome characterization of clinical Mycobacterium abscessus isolates provides insights into antigenic differences. Mycobacterium abscessus

Mycobacterium abscessus (MAB) is a widely disseminated pathogenic non-tuberculous mycobacterium (NTM). Like with M. tuberculosis complex, excreted / secreted (ES) proteins play an essential role for its virulence and survival inside the host. ES proteins contain highly immunogenic proteins, suitable for the vaccines development and diagnostic assays. We used a robust bioinformatics pipeline to predict the secretome of M. abscessus ATCC 19977 reference strain and fifteen clinical isolates belonging to all three MAB subspecies, M. abscessus subsp. abscessus, M. abscessus subsp. bolletii, and M. abscessus subsp. massiliense.