Cloning, expression, purification and preliminary X-ray diffraction studies of a mycobacterial protein implicated in bacterial survival in macrophages.

Mycobacterium species have developed numerous strategies to avoid the antimycobacterial actions of macrophages, enabling them to survive within the generally inhospitable environment of the cell. The recently identified MSMEG_5817 protein from M. smegmatis is highly conserved in Mycobacterium spp.