Development of a lateral flow immunochromatography test for the rapid detection of bovine tuberculosis.

Detection of specific antibodies would be a useful test strategy for bovine tuberculosis (bTB) as a complement to the single skin test. We developed a lateral flow immunochromatography (LFIC) test for rapid bTB detection based on the use of a conjugate of gold nanoparticles with a recombinant G protein. After evaluating 3 Mycobacterium bovis (MB) antigens: ESAT-6, CFP-10 and MPB83 for the control line, we selected MPB83 given it was the most specific. The performance of the test was analyzed with 820 bovine sera, 40 sera corresponding to healthy animals, 5 sera from animals infected with Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) and 775 sera of animals from herds with bTB. All these sera were also submitted to a validated bTB-ELISA using whole-cell antigen from MB. From the 775 sera of animals from herds with bTB, 87 sera were positive by the bTB-ELISA, 45 were positive by LFIC and only 5 animals were positives by skin test (TST). To confirm bTB infection in the group of TST (-), bTB-ELISA (+) and LFIC (+) animals, we performed postmortem examination in 15 randomly selected animals. Macroscopically, these 15 animals had numerous small and large yellow-white granulomas, characteristic of bTB, and the infection was subsequently confirmed by PCR in these tissues with lesions (gold standard). No false positive test result was detected with the developed LFIC either with the sera from healthy animals or from animals infected with MAP demonstrating that it can be a useful technique for the rapid identification of animals infected with bTB.

Study of the role of Mce3R on the transcription of mce genes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

BACKGROUND: mce3 is one of the four virulence-related mce operons of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In a previous work we showed that the overexpression of Mce3R in Mycobacterium smegmatis and M. tuberculosis abolishes the expression of lacZ fused to the mce3 promoter, indicating that Mce3R represses mce3 transcription. RESULTS: We obtained a knockout mutant strain of M. tuberculosis H37Rv by inserting a hygromycin cassette into the mce3R gene. The mutation results in a significant increase in the expression of mce3 genes either in vitro or in a murine cell macrophages line as it was determined using promoter-lacZ fusions in M. tuberculosis. The abundance of mce1, mce2 and mce4 mRNAs was not affected by this mutation as it was demonstrated by quantitative RT-PCR. The mce3R promoter activity in the presence of Mce3R was significantly reduced compared with that in the absence of the regulator, during the in vitro culture of M. tuberculosis. CONCLUSION: Mce3R repress the transcription of mce3 operon and self regulates its own expression but does not affect the transcription of mce1, mce2 and mce4 operons of M. tuberculosis.