The influence of reduced oxygen availability on gene expression in Laboratory (H37Rv) and clinical strains (S7 and S10) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Mycobacterium tuberculosis has the ability to persist within the host in a clinically latent stage. One important condition believed to contribute to latency is reduced access to oxygen but the response of M. tuberculosis to hypoxia is partially characterized. Virtually all dormant models against tuberculosis the vaccine tested in animals used laboratory strains H37Rv or Erdman strains. But major outbreaks of TB occur with the strains that have widely different genotypes and phenotypes compare to H37Rv. In this study, we used a commercial oligonucleotide microarray to determine the overall transcriptional response of lab strain (H37Rv) and most prevalent strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from South India S7 and S10 to hypoxia. Analysis of microarray results revealed that a total of 1161 genes are differentially regulated in H37Rv, among them 659 genes are upregulated and 502 genes are down regulated when > 1.5 fold change was taken as cut off. Microarray data of clinical isolates showed total of 790 genes are differentially regulated in S7 clinical isolates among which 453 are upregulated and 337 are down regulated. Interestingly numerous genes are differentially regulated in S10 clinical isolates (total of 2805 genes) and 1463 are upregulated and 1342 genes are down regulated during reduced oxygen model (Wayne’s model). Real-time quantitative RT-PCR was performed for few genes to validate the microarray results. To our knowledge, this genome-wide transcriptomics approach has produced the first insights into the response of South Indian prevalent clinical strains of M. tuberculosis when exposed to reduced oxygen stress. Overall design: Three samples of Mycobacterium tuberculosis namely H37Rv,S7 and S10 were included. All are triplicates. Here control strain is H37Rv.