Proteome remodeling in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis PknG knockout: Molecular evidence for the role of this kinase in cell envelope biogenesis and hypoxia response.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the etiological agent of tuberculosis, is among the deadliest human pathogens. One of M. tuberculosis's pathogenic hallmarks is its ability to persist in a dormant state in the host. Thus, this pathogen has developed mechanisms to withstand stressful conditions found in the human host. Particularly, the Ser/Thr-protein kinase PknG has gained relevance since it regulates nitrogen metabolism and facilitates bacterial survival inside macrophages. Nevertheless, the molecular mechanisms underlying these effects are far from being elucidated. To further investigate these issues, we performed quantitative proteomic analyses of protein extracts from M. tuberculosis H37Rv and a mutant lacking pknG. We found that in the absence of PknG the mycobacterial proteome was remodeled since 5.7% of the proteins encoded by M. tuberculosis presented significant changes in its relative abundance compared with the wild-type. The main biological processes affected by pknG deletion were cell envelope components biosynthesis and response to hypoxia. Thirteen DosR-regulated proteins were underrepresented in the pknG deletion mutant, including Hrp-1, which was 12.5-fold decreased according to Parallel Reaction Monitoring experiments. Altogether, our results allow us to postulate that PknG regulation of bacterial adaptation to stress conditions might be an important mechanism underlying its reported effect on intracellular bacterial survival. SIGNIFICANCE: PknG is a Ser/Thr kinase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis with key roles in bacterial metabolism and bacterial survival within the host. However, at present the molecular mechanisms underlying these functions remain largely unknown. In this work, we evaluate the effect of pknG deletion on M. tuberculosis proteome using different approaches. Our results clearly show that the global proteome was remodeled in the absence of PknG and shed light on new molecular mechanism underlying PknG role. Altogether, this work contributes to a better understanding of the molecular bases of the adaptation of M. tuberculosis, one of the most deadly human pathogens, to its host.

New substrates and interactors of the mycobacterial Serine/Threonine protein kinase PknG identified by a tailored interactomic approach.

PknG from Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a multidomain Serine/Threonine protein kinase that regulates bacterial metabolism as well as the pathogen's ability to survive inside the host by still uncertain mechanisms. To uncover PknG interactome we developed an affinity purification-mass spectrometry strategy to stepwise recover PknG substrates and interactors; and to identify those involving PknG autophosphorylated docking sites. We report a confident list of 7 new putative substrates and 66 direct or indirect partners indicating that PknG regulates many physiological processes, such as nitrogen and energy metabolism, cell wall synthesis and protein translation. GarA and the 50S ribosomal protein L13, two previously reported substrates of PknG, were recovered in our interactome. Comparative proteome analyses of wild type and pknG null mutant M. tuberculosis strains provided evidence that two kinase interactors, the FHA-domain containing protein GarA and the enzyme glutamine synthetase, are indeed endogenous substrates of PknG, stressing the role of this kinase in the regulation of nitrogen metabolism. Interestingly, a second FHA protein was identified as a PknG substrate. Our results show that PknG phosphorylates specific residues in both glutamine synthetase and FhaA in vitro, and suggest that these proteins are phosphorylated by PknG in living mycobacteria.

Macrophage activation induces formation of the anti-inflammatory lipid cholesteryl-nitrolinoleate.

Nitroalkene derivatives of fatty acids act as adaptive, anti-inflammatory signalling mediators, based on their high-affinity PPARgamma (peroxisome-proliferator-activated receptor gamma) ligand activity and electrophilic reactivity with proteins, including transcription factors. Although free or esterified lipid nitroalkene derivatives have been detected in human plasma and urine, their generation by inflammatory stimuli has not been reported. In the present study, we show increased nitration of cholesteryl-linoleate by activated murine J774.1 macrophages, yielding the mononitrated nitroalkene CLNO2 (cholesteryl-nitrolinoleate). CLNO2 levels were found to increase approximately 20-fold 24 h after macrophage activation with Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide plus interferon-gamma; this response was concurrent with an increase in the expression of NOS2 (inducible nitric oxide synthase) and was inhibited by the (*)NO (nitric oxide) inhibitor L-NAME (N(G)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester). Macrophage (J774.1 and bone-marrow-derived cells) inflammatory responses were suppressed when activated in the presence of CLNO2 or LNO2 (nitrolinoleate). This included: (i) inhibition of NOS2 expression and cytokine secretion through PPARgamma and *NO-independent mechanisms; (ii) induction of haem oxygenase-1 expression; and (iii) inhibition of NF-kappaB (nuclear factor kappaB) activation. Overall, these results suggest that lipid nitration occurs as part of the response of macrophages to inflammatory stimuli involving NOS2 induction and that these by-products of nitro-oxidative reactions may act as novel adaptive down-regulators of inflammatory responses.