Secretome characterization of clinical isolates from Mycobacterium abscessus complex provides insight into antigenic differences.

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. ESproteins contain highly immunogenic proteins, suitable for the vaccines development and diagnostic assays. We used a robustbioinformatics pipeline to predict the secretome of M. abscessus ATCC 19977 reference strain and fifteen clinical isolates belongingto all three MAB subspecies, M. abscessus subsp. abscessus, M. abscessus subsp. bolletii, and M. abscessus subsp. massiliense.