Mycobacterium tuberculosis hijacks host primary transcripts

Intracellular pathogens requires efficient mechanism adapting the environment inside of host cells. Here we show that the transcriptomes of the cellular mycobacterium tuberculosis and of those released from the infected macrophage cells contain a large fraction of human transcripts by RNA polymerase II. Uptake of host pre-mRNAs is coincident with the co-localization of M. tuberculosis with nuclear membrane. The infective M. tuberculosis selectively uptakes snoRNAs.The intracellular pathogens has a preferable capability in taking pre-mRNAs. The host transcripts are not generally spliced nor translated.We suggest that the intracellular bacterium has acquired a mechanism to take transcripts from the host cell nuclus as its own nutrient supply and may help them to survive with hosts. Overall design: Totally 22 samples are analyzed. Intracellular and extracellular of MTB and BCG in 6h and 24h were generated by deep sequencing separately, THP-1 infected by MTB and BCG in 6h and 24h were generated by deep sequencing separately, meanwhile uninfected control of THP-1 were generated. THP-1 were generated with two different library manner (polyA-capture and rRNA-removal).