Lipoarabinomannan modification as a source of phenotypic heterogeneity in host-adapted <i>Mycobacterium abscessus</i> isolates.

ABSTRACT: Mycobacterium abscessus is increasingly recognized as the causative agent of chronic pulmonary infections in humans. One of the genes found to be under strong evolutionary pressure during adaptation of M. abscessus to the human lung is embC which encodes an arabinosyltransferase required for the biosynthesis of the cell envelope lipoglycan, lipoarabinomannan (LAM). To assess the impact of patient-derived embC mutations on the physiology and virulence of M. abscessus, mutations were introduced in the isogenic background of M. abscessus ATCC 19977 and the resulting strains probed for phenotypic changes in a variety of in vitro and host cell-based assays relevant to infection. We show that patient-derived mutational variations in EmbC result in an une

SUBMITTER: De K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11046677 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature