Mycobacterial biotin synthases require an auxiliary protein to convert dethiobiotin into biotin.

Lipid biosynthesis in the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis depends on biotin for posttranslational modification of key enzymes. However, the mycobacterial biotin synthetic pathway is not fully understood. Here, we show that rv1590, a gene of previously unknown function, is required by M. tuberculosis to synthesize biotin. Chemical-generic interaction experiments mapped the function of rv1590 to the conversion of dethiobiotin to biotin, which is catalyzed by biotin synthases (BioB). Biochemical studies confirmed that in contrast to BioB of Escherichia coli, BioB of M. tuberculosis requires Rv1590 (which we named "biotin synthase auxiliary protein" or BsaP), for activity. We found homologs of bsaP associated with bioB in many actinobacterial genomes, and confirmed that BioB of Mycobacterium smegmatis also requires BsaP. Structural comparisons of BsaP-associated biotin synthases with BsaP-independent biotin synthases suggest that the need for BsaP is determined by the [2Fe-2S] cluster that inserts sulfur into dethiobiotin. Our findings open new opportunities to seek BioB inhibitors to treat infections with M. tuberculosis and other pathogens.

Commensal antimicrobial resistance mediates microbiome resilience to antibiotic disruption.

Despite their therapeutic benefits, antibiotics exert collateral damage on the microbiome and promote antimicrobial resistance. However, the mechanisms governing microbiome recovery from antibiotics are poorly understood. Treatment of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the world's most common infection, represents the longest antimicrobial exposure in humans. Here, we investigate gut microbiome dynamics over 20 months of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and 6 months of drug-sensitive TB treatment in humans. We find that gut microbiome dynamics and TB clearance are shared predictive cofactors of the resolution of TB-driven inflammation. The initial severe taxonomic and functional microbiome disruption, pathobiont domination, and enhancement of antibiotic resistance that initially accompanied long-term antibiotics were countered by later recovery of commensals. This resilience was driven by the competing evolution of antimicrobial resistance mutations in pathobionts and commensals, with commensal strains with resistance mutations reestablishing dominance. Fecal-microbiota transplantation of the antibiotic-resistant commensal microbiome in mice recapitulated resistance to further antibiotic disruption. These findings demonstrate that antimicrobial resistance mutations in commensals can have paradoxically beneficial effects by promoting microbiome resilience to antimicrobials and identify microbiome dynamics as a predictor of disease resolution in antibiotic therapy of a chronic infection.

Lysyl-tRNA synthetase, a target for urgently needed M. tuberculosis drugs.

Tuberculosis is a major global cause of both mortality and financial burden mainly in low and middle-income countries. Given the significant and ongoing rise of drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis within the clinical setting, there is an urgent need for the development of new, safe and effective treatments. Here the development of a drug-like series based on a fused dihydropyrrolidino-pyrimidine scaffold is described. The series has been developed against M. tuberculosis lysyl-tRNA synthetase (LysRS) and cellular studies support this mechanism of action. DDD02049209, the lead compound, is efficacious in mouse models of acute and chronic tuberculosis and has suitable physicochemical, pharmacokinetic properties and an in vitro safety profile that supports further development. Importantly, preliminary analysis using clinical resistant strains shows no pre-existing clinical resistance towards this scaffold.

Division of labor between SOS and PafBC in mycobacterial DNA repair and mutagenesis.

DNA repair systems allow microbes to survive in diverse environments that compromise chromosomal integrity. Pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis must contend with the genotoxic host environment, which generates the mutations that underlie antibiotic resistance. Mycobacteria encode the widely distributed SOS pathway, governed by the LexA repressor, but also encode PafBC, a positive regulator of the transcriptional DNA damage response (DDR). Although the transcriptional outputs of these systems have been characterized, their full functional division of labor in survival and mutagenesis is unknown. Here, we specifically ablate the PafBC or SOS pathways, alone and in combination, and test their relative contributions to repair. We find that SOS and PafBC have both distinct and overlapping roles that depend on the type of DNA damage. Most notably, we find that quinolone antibiotics and replication fork perturbation are inducers of the PafBC pathway, and that chromosomal mutagenesis is codependent on PafBC and SOS, through shared regulation of the DnaE2/ImuA/B mutasome. These studies define the complex transcriptional regulatory network of the DDR in mycobacteria and provide new insight into the regulatory mechanisms controlling the genesis of antibiotic resistance in M. tuberculosis.

Integrated sensing of host stresses by inhibition of a cytoplasmic two-component system controls M. tuberculosis acute lung infection.

Bacterial pathogens that infect phagocytic cells must deploy mechanisms that sense and neutralize host microbicidal effectors. For Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, these mechanisms allow the bacterium to rapidly adapt from aerosol transmission to initial growth in the lung alveolar macrophage. Here, we identify a branched signaling circuit in M. tuberculosis that controls growth in the lung through integrated direct sensing of copper ions and nitric oxide by coupled activity of the Rip1 intramembrane protease and the PdtaS/R two-component system. This circuit uses a two-signal mechanism to inactivate the PdtaS/PdtaR two-component system, which constitutively represses virulence gene expression. Cu and NO inhibit the PdtaS sensor kinase through a dicysteine motif in the N-terminal GAF domain. The NO arm of the pathway is further controlled by sequestration of the PdtaR RNA binding response regulator by an NO-induced small RNA, controlled by the Rip1 intramembrane protease. This coupled Rip1/PdtaS/PdtaR circuit controls NO resistance and acute lung infection in mice by relieving PdtaS/R-mediated repression of isonitrile chalkophore biosynthesis. These studies identify an integrated mechanism by which M. tuberculosis senses and resists macrophage chemical effectors to achieve pathogenesis.

Two-Way Regulation of MmpL3 Expression Identifies and Validates Inhibitors of MmpL3 Function in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

MmpL3, an essential mycolate transporter in the inner membrane of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), has been identified as a target of multiple, chemically diverse antitubercular drugs. However, several of these molecules seem to have secondary targets and inhibit bacterial growth by more than one mechanism. Here, we describe a cell-based assay that utilizes two-way regulation of MmpL3 expression to readily identify MmpL3-specific inhibitors. We successfully used this assay to identify a novel guanidine-based MmpL3 inhibitor from a library of 220 compounds that inhibit growth of Mtb by largely unknown mechanisms. We furthermore identified inhibitors of cytochrome bc1-aa3 oxidase as one class of off-target hits in whole-cell screens for MmpL3 inhibitors and report a novel sulfanylacetamide as a potential QcrB inhibitor.

Urinary biomarkers of mycobacterial load and treatment response in pulmonary tuberculosis.

BACKGROUNDControl of the tuberculosis (TB) pandemic remains hindered in part by a lack of simple and accurate measures of treatment efficacy, as current gold standard markers rely on sputum-based assays that are slow and challenging to implement. However, previous work identified urinary N1, N12-diacetylspermine (DiAcSpm), neopterin, hydroxykynurenine, N-acetylhexosamine, ureidopropionic acid, sialic acid, and mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) 241.0903 as potential biomarkers of active pulmonary TB (ATB). Here, we evaluated their ability to serve as biomarkers of TB treatment response and mycobacterial load.METHODSWe analyzed urine samples prospectively collected from 2 cohorts with ATB. A total of 34 study participants from African countries treated with first-line TB therapy rifampin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide, and ethambutol (HRZE) were followed for 1 year, and 35 participants from Haiti treated with either HRZE or an experimental drug were followed for 14 days. Blinded samples were analyzed by untargeted HPLC-coupled high-resolution TOF-mass spectrometry.RESULTSUrinary levels of all 7 molecules significantly decreased by week 26 of successful treatment (P = 0.01 to P < 0.0001) and positively correlated with sputum mycobacterial load (P < 0.0001). Urinary DiAcSpm levels decreased significantly in participants treated with HRZE as early as 14 days (P < 0.0001) but remained unchanged in cases of ineffective therapy (P = 0.14).CONCLUSIONUrinary DiAcSpm, neopterin, hydroxykynurenine, N-acetylhexosamine, ureidopropionic acid, sialic acid, and m/z 241.0903 reductions correlated with successful anti-TB treatment and sputum mycobacterial load. Urinary DiAcSpm levels exhibited reductions capable of differentiating treatment success from failure as early as 2 weeks after the initiation of chemotherapy, advocating its further development as a potentially simple, noninvasive biomarker for assessing treatment response and bacterial load.FUNDINGThis work was supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Center at Weill Cornell College of Medicine (NIH/NCATS 1 UL1 TR002384-02 and KL2TR000458), the Department of Defense (PR170782), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease grants (NIAID T32AI007613-16, K24 AI098627, and K23 AI131913), the NIH Fogarty International Center grants (R24 TW007988 and TW010062), NIH grant (R01 GM135926), the Abby and Howard P. Milstein Program in Chemical Biology and Translational Medicine, and the Tuberculosis Research Units Networks (TBRU-N, AI111143).

Investigation of ( S)-(-)-Acidomycin: A Selective Antimycobacterial Natural Product That Inhibits Biotin Synthase.

The synthesis, absolute stereochemical configuration, complete biological characterization, mechanism of action and resistance, and pharmacokinetic properties of ( S)-(-)-acidomycin are described. Acidomycin possesses promising antitubercular activity against a series of contemporary drug susceptible and drug-resistant M. tuberculosis strains (minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) = 0.096-6.2 µM) but is inactive against nontuberculosis mycobacteria and Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens (MICs > 1000 µM). Complementation studies with biotin biosynthetic pathway intermediates and subsequent biochemical studies confirmed acidomycin inhibits biotin synthesis with a Ki of approximately 1 µM through the competitive inhibition of biotin synthase (BioB) and also stimulates unproductive cleavage of S-adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM) to generate the toxic metabolite 5'-deoxyadenosine. Cell studies demonstrate acidomycin selectively accumulates in M. tuberculosis providing a mechanistic basis for the observed antibacterial activity. The development of spontaneous resistance by M. tuberculosis to acidomycin was difficult, and only low-level resistance to acidomycin was observed by overexpression of BioB. Collectively, the results provide a foundation to advance acidomycin and highlight BioB as a promising target.

Mass Spectrometric Identification of Urinary Biomarkers of Pulmonary Tuberculosis.

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious cause of death worldwide. A major barrier to control of the pandemic is a lack of clinical biomarkers with the ability to distinguish active TB from healthy and sick controls and potential for development into point-of-care diagnostics. METHODS: We conducted a prospective case control study to identify candidate urine-based diagnostic biomarkers of active pulmonary TB (discovery cohort) and obtained a separate blinded "validation" cohort of confirmed cases of active pulmonary TB and controls with non-tuberculous pulmonary disease for validation. Clean-catch urine samples were collected and analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography-coupled time-of-flight mass spectrometry. RESULTS: We discovered ten molecules from the discovery cohort with receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) area-under-the-curve (AUC) values >85%. These 10 molecules also significantly decreased after 60 days of treatment in a subset of 20 participants followed over time. Of these, a specific combination of diacetylspermine, neopterin, sialic acid, and N-acetylhexosamine exhibited ROC AUCs >80% in a blinded validation cohort of participants with active TB and non-tuberculous pulmonary disease. CONCLUSION: Urinary levels of diacetylspermine, neopterin, sialic acid, and N-acetylhexosamine distinguished patients with tuberculosis from healthy controls and patients with non-tuberculous pulmonary diseases, providing a potential noninvasive biosignature of active TB. FUNDING: This study was funded by Weill Cornell Medicine, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Clinical and Translational Science Center at Weill Cornell, the NIH Fogarty International Center grants, and the NIH Tuberculosis Research Unit (Tri-I TBRU).

Antibiotic treatment for Tuberculosis induces a profound dysbiosis of the microbiome that persists long after therapy is completed.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the cause of Tuberculosis (TB), infects one third of the world's population and causes substantial mortality worldwide. In its shortest format, treatment of TB requires six months of multidrug therapy with a mixture of broad spectrum and mycobacterial specific antibiotics, and treatment of multidrug resistant TB is longer. The widespread use of this regimen makes this one of the largest exposures of humans to antimicrobials, yet the effects of TB treatment on intestinal microbiome composition and long-term stability are unknown. We compared the microbiome composition, assessed by both 16S rDNA and metagenomic DNA sequencing, of TB cases during antimycobacterial treatment and following cure by 6 months of antibiotics. TB treatment does not perturb overall diversity, but nonetheless dramatically depletes multiple immunologically significant commensal bacteria. The microbiomic perturbation of TB therapy can persist for at least 1.2 years, indicating that the effects of TB treatment are long lasting. These results demonstrate that TB treatment has dramatic effects on the intestinal microbiome and highlight unexpected durable consequences of treatment for the world's most common infection on human ecology.

Structure and function of the mycobacterial transcription initiation complex with the essential regulator RbpA.

RbpA and CarD are essential transcription regulators in mycobacteria. Mechanistic analyses of promoter open complex (RPo) formation establish that RbpA and CarD cooperatively stimulate formation of an intermediate (RP2) leading to RPo; formation of RP2 is likely a bottleneck step at the majority of mycobacterial promoters. Once RPo forms, CarD also disfavors its isomerization back to RP2. We determined a 2.76 Å-resolution crystal structure of a mycobacterial transcription initiation complex (TIC) with RbpA as well as a CarD/RbpA/TIC model. Both CarD and RbpA bind near the upstream edge of the -10 element where they likely facilitate DNA bending and impede transcription bubble collapse. In vivo studies demonstrate the essential role of RbpA, show the effects of RbpA truncations on transcription and cell physiology, and indicate additional functions for RbpA not evident in vitro. This work provides a framework to understand the control of mycobacterial transcription by RbpA and CarD.

The effects of molecular noise and size control on variability in the budding yeast cell cycle.

Molecular noise in gene expression can generate substantial variability in protein concentration. However, its effect on the precision of a natural eukaryotic circuit such as the control of cell cycle remains unclear. We use single-cell imaging of fluorescently labelled budding yeast to measure times from division to budding (G1) and from budding to the next division. The variability in G1 decreases with the square root of the ploidy through a 1N/2N/4N ploidy series, consistent with simple stochastic models for molecular noise. Also, increasing the gene dosage of G1 cyclins decreases the variability in G1. A new single-cell reporter for cell protein content allows us to determine the contribution to temporal G1 variability of deterministic size control (that is, smaller cells extending G1). Cell size control contributes significantly to G1 variability in daughter cells but not in mother cells. However, even in daughters, size-independent noise is the largest quantitative contributor to G1 variability. Exit of the transcriptional repressor Whi5 from the nucleus partitions G1 into two temporally uncorrelated and functionally distinct steps. The first step, which depends on the G1 cyclin gene CLN3, corresponds to noisy size control that extends G1 in small daughters, but is of negligible duration in mothers. The second step, whose variability decreases with increasing CLN2 gene dosage, is similar in mothers and daughters. This analysis decomposes the regulatory dynamics of the Start transition into two independent modules, a size sensing module and a timing module, each of which is predominantly controlled by a different G1 cyclin.

Phosphorylation of the Sic1 inhibitor of B-type cyclins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is not essential but contributes to cell cycle robustness.

In budding yeast, B-type cyclin (Clb)-dependent kinase activity is essential for S phase and mitosis. In newborn G(1) cells, Clb kinase accumulation is blocked, in part because of the Sic1 stoichiometric inhibitor. Previous results strongly suggested that G(1) cyclin-dependent Sic1 phosphorylation, and its consequent degradation, is essential for S phase. However, cells containing a precise endogenous gene replacement of SIC1 with SIC1-0P (all nine phosphorylation sites mutated) were fully viable. Unphosphorylatable Sic1 was abundant and nuclear throughout the cell cycle and effectively inhibited Clb kinase in vitro. SIC1-0P cells had a lengthened G(1) and increased G(1) cyclin transcriptional activation and variable delays in the budded part of the cell cycle. SIC1-0P was lethal when combined with deletion of CLB2, CLB3, or CLB5, the major B-type cyclins. Sic1 phosphorylation provides a sharp link between G(1) cyclin activation and Clb kinase activation, but failure of Sic1 phosphorylation and proteolysis imposes a variable cell cycle delay and extreme sensitivity to B-type cyclin dosage, rather than a lethal cell cycle block.

Ribosome biogenesis is sensed at the Start cell cycle checkpoint.

In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae it has long been thought that cells must reach a critical cell size, called the "setpoint," in order to allow the Start cell cycle transition. Recent evidence suggests that this setpoint is lowered when ribosome biogenesis is slowed. Here we present evidence that yeast can sense ribosome biogenesis independently of mature ribosome levels and protein synthetic capacity. Our results suggest that ribosome biogenesis directly promotes passage through Start through Whi5, the yeast functional equivalent to the human tumor suppressor Rb. When ribosome biogenesis is inhibited, a Whi5-dependent mechanism inhibits passage through Start before significant decreases in both the number of ribosomes and in overall translation capacity of the cell become evident. This delay at Start in response to decreases in ribosome biogenesis occurs independently of Cln3, the major known Whi5 antagonist. Thus ribosome biogenesis may be sensed at multiple steps in Start regulation. Ribosome biogenesis may thus both delay Start by increasing the cell size setpoint and independently may promote Start by inactivating Whi5.

Coherence and timing of cell cycle start examined at single-cell resolution.

Cell cycle "Start" in budding yeast involves induction of a large battery of G1/S-regulated genes, coordinated with bud morphogenesis. It is unknown how intra-Start coherence of these events and inter-Start timing regularity are achieved. We developed quantitative time-lapse fluorescence microscopy on a multicell-cycle timescale, for following expression of unstable GFP under control of the G1 cyclin CLN2 promoter. Swi4, a major activator of the G1/S regulon, was required for a robustly coherent Start, as swi4 cells exhibited highly variable loss of cooccurrence of regular levels of CLN2pr-GFP expression with budding. In contrast, other known Start regulators Mbp1 and Cln3 are not needed for coherence but ensure regular timing of Start onset. The interval of nuclear retention of Whi5, a Swi4 repressor, largely accounts for wild-type mother-daughter asymmetry and for variable Start timing in cln3 mbp1 cells. Thus, multiple pathways may independently suppress qualitatively different kinds of noise at Start.

High functional overlap between MluI cell-cycle box binding factor and Swi4/6 cell-cycle box binding factor in the G1/S transcriptional program in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

In budding yeast, many genes are induced early in the cell cycle. Induction of these genes has been predominantly attributed to two transcription factors, Swi4-Swi6 (SBF) and Mbp1-Swi6 (MBF). Swi4 and Mbp1 are related DNA-binding proteins with dissimilar target sequences. For most G1/S-regulated genes that we tested in a cdc20 block-release protocol for cell-cycle synchronization, removal of both Swi4 and Mbp1 was necessary and sufficient to essentially eliminate cell-cycle-regulated expression. Detectable SBF or MBF binding sites (SCBs or MCBs) in the promoters or available genome-wide promoter occupancy data do not consistently explain this functional overlap. The overlapping ability of these transcription factors to regulate many promoters with very similar cell-cycle kinetics may provide robustness to the G1/S transcriptional response, but poses a puzzle with respect to promoter-transcription factor specificity. In addition, for some genes, deletion of Mbp1 or Swi4 enhances transcription, suggesting that these factors can also function as transcriptional repressors. Finally, we observe residual G1/S transcriptional regulation in the absence of Swi4 and Mbp1.