Dissecting the transcriptional regulation of fatty acid biosynthesis in mycobacteria.

MONDINO, S; GRAMAJO, H; GAGO, G.

Paris

Congreso; Genomes 2014: EMBO Conference on Microbiology after the genomics revolution; 2014

Instituto Pasteur Paris

Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains a major human public health threat. The success of this pathogen largely stems from its remarkable capacity to survive within the infected host, being its unusual cell wall a key factor in this survival. Mycobacteria cell wall biosynthesis involves two structural distinct fatty acid synthase systems, FAS-I and FAS-II, working in a coordinate manner to keep lipid homeostasis tightly regulated. Our studies on the regulation of fasII operon and the identification of MabR suggested that the coordinate regulation of the two FAS systems not only occurs at the post-translational levels, but also at the hierarchical upper level of transcription. Although overexpression of MabR also produced an alteration on the expression levels of fas, we failed to demonstrate a direct role of MabR on the transcriptional regulation of fas, suggesting that a much complex network of regulation of fatty acid/mycolic acid biosynthesis would exist.