Identification and evaluation of new Mycobacterium bovis antigens in the in vitro interferon gamma release assay for bovine tuberculosis diagnosis.

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a common zoonotic disease, caused by Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis), responsible for significant economic losses worldwide. Its diagnosis is based on the detection of cell mediated immunity under the exposure to protein purified derivative tuberculin (PPD), a complex and poorly characterized reagent.

Study of the immunological profile towards Mycobacterium bovis antigens in naturally infected cattle.

A number of studies have determined the contribution of Th1 and Th2 responses to the protective immunity and pathology of Mycobacterium bovis infection. However, much of that information is derived from experimentally infecting cattle with M. bovis and few data from naturally infected animals are available.

Mce2R from Mycobacterium tuberculosis represses the expression of the mce2 operon.

The mce2 operon is one of the four mce operons present in Mycobacterium tuberculosis that encode exported proteins with a probable role in the virulence mechanisms of this bacterium. In the present study we demonstrated that Rv0586, which encodes a putative GntR-like regulator, is part of the mce2 operon. By using a promoter-lacZ fusion approach and bioinformatics tools, we found that Rv0586 represses the expression of Mce2 proteins and of a putative endonuclease IV, encoded by end (Rv0670) gene.

The knockout of the lprG-Rv1410 operon produces strong attenuation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

P27 lipoprotein was previously described as an antigen in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, encoded by the lprG gene, also named Rv1411 in the TubercuList (http://genolist.pasteur.fr/TubercuList) gene bank.

Negative transcriptional regulation of the mce3 operon in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

mce3 is one of the four mce operons in Mycobacterium tuberculosis that encode exported proteins with a probable role in the virulence of this bacterium. Upstream of mce3 there is a putative regulatory gene (Rv1963) that harbours a double tetR-family signature. To study the role of this putative regulatory gene in the transcriptional regulation of the mce3 operon, Mycobacterium smegmatis mc(2)155 and M.

A 12.7 kb fragment of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome is not present in Mycobacterium bovis.

Southern blotting, sequence analysis and PCR experiments showed that Mycobacterium bovis and Mycobacterium bovis BCG lack a 12.7 kb fragment present in the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This region is 337 bp downstream of the RD2 region, which was previously described as being absent from some M.