Abstract
BackgroundThe usually non-pathogenic soil bacterium Mycobacterium smegmatis is commonly used as a model mycobacterial organism because it is fast growing and shares many features with pathogenic mycobacteria. Proteomic studies of M. smegmatis can shed light on mechanisms of mycobacterial growth, complex lipid metabolism, interactions with the bacterial environment and provide a tractable system for antimycobacterial drug development. The cell wall proteins are particularly interesting in this respect. The aim of this study was to construct a reference protein map for these proteins in M. smegmatis.ResultsA proteomic analysis approach, based on one dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and LC-MS/MS, was used to identify and characterize the cell wall associated proteins of M. smegmatis. An enzymatic cell surface shaving method was used to determine the surface-exposed proteins. As a result, a total of 390 cell wall proteins and 63 surface-exposed proteins were identified. Further analysis of the 390 cell wall proteins provided the theoretical molecular mass and pI distributions and determined that 26 proteins are shared with the surface-exposed proteome. Detailed information about functional classification, signal peptides and number of transmembrane domains are given next to discussing the identified transcriptional regulators, transport proteins and the proteins involved in lipid metabolism and cell division.ConclusionIn short, a comprehensive profile of the M. smegmatis cell wall subproteome is reported. The current research may help the identification of some valuable vaccine and drug target candidates and provide foundation for the future design of preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic strategies against mycobacterial diseases.
Highlights
The usually non-pathogenic soil bacterium Mycobacterium smegmatis is commonly used as a model mycobacterial organism because it is fast growing and shares many features with pathogenic mycobacteria
Mycobacterium smegmatis was originally isolated from humans, this fast-growing mycobacterium species is mostly nonpathogenic and has been used as a model to investigate mycobacterial physiology [1,2]
Many proteins required for the pathogenicity of Mycobacteria are surface proteins that are involved in lipid metabolism and transport across the cell envelope [3,4]
Summary
The usually non-pathogenic soil bacterium Mycobacterium smegmatis is commonly used as a model mycobacterial organism because it is fast growing and shares many features with pathogenic mycobacteria. Proteomic studies of M. smegmatis can shed light on mechanisms of mycobacterial growth, complex lipid metabolism, interactions with the bacterial environment and provide a tractable system for antimycobacterial drug development. Mycobacterium smegmatis was originally isolated from humans, this fast-growing mycobacterium species is mostly nonpathogenic and has been used as a model to investigate mycobacterial physiology [1,2] This fast-growing nonpathogenic bacterium is useful in studying basic cellular processes of relevance to pathogenic mycobacteria, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, M. avium subsp. Research on the cell wall proteome of M. smegmatis provides promising candidates for vaccine and drug development against pathogenic Mycobacterium spp., especially since it turns out that bacterial cell envelope together with plasma membrane proteins constitute the majority of currently known drug targets [5,6]
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