Co-expression network analysis of toxin-antitoxin loci in Mycobacterium tuberculosis reveals key modulators of cellular stress.

ABSTRACT: Research on toxin-antitoxin loci (TA loci) is gaining impetus due to their ubiquitous presence in bacterial genomes and their observed roles in stress survival, persistence and drug tolerance. The present study investigates the expression profile of all the seventy-nine TA loci found in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The bacterium was subjected to multiple stress conditions to identify key players of cellular stress response and elucidate a TA-coexpression network. This study provides direct experimental evidence for transcriptional activation of each of the seventy-nine TA loci following mycobacterial exposure to growth-limiting environments clearly establishing TA loci as stress-responsive modules in M. tuberculosis. TA locus activation was found to be stress-specific with multiple loci act

SUBMITTER: Gupta A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5517426 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature