Tuberculosis remains as an important socioeconomical and medical problem throughout the world and especially in Iran. Early and timely diagnosis of pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis is vital to initiate prompt treatment. Current diagnostic methods are either slow or lack enough sensitivity or specificity. Several mycobacterial antigens are involved in the complex interaction with t...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains the predominant bacterial scourge of mankind. Understanding of its biology and pathogenicity has been greatly advanced by the determination of whole genome sequences for this organism. Bacterial lipoproteins are a functionally diverse class of membrane-anchored proteins. The signal peptides of these proteins direct their export and post-translational lipid mod...

A common theme in medical microbiology is that the amount of amino acid sequence variation in proteins that are targets of the host immune system greatly exceeds that found in metabolic enzymes or other housekeeping proteins. Twenty-four Mycobacterium tuberculosis genes coding for targets of the host immune system were sequenced in 16 strains representing the breadth of genomic diversity in the...

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is the principal stimulator of host defense against gram-negative bacteria. LPS-binding protein (LBP), bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI), and soluble CD14 (sCD14) bind LPS and regulate its toxicity. Lipoarabinomannan, a cell wall component of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, resembles LPS with respect to induction of inflammatory responses through recognitio...

Mass spectrometry (MS) for the detection of proteins is an indispensable tool for evaluating the biological processes of the proteome. Proteomics frequently requires proteolysis of proteins into peptide fragments. Proteins can be refractory to ideal proteolysis at the sequence level rendering them difficult to analyze by routine proteomics methods. EsxA (ESAT-6, Early Secreted Antigen, 6kDa) is...

BACKGROUND Glycosylation is one of the most abundant posttranslational polypeptide chain modification in nature. Although carbohydrate modification of protein antigens from many microbial pathogens constitutes important components of B cell epitopes, the role in T cell immunity is not completely understood. There is growing evidence about the importance of these modifications in host bacteria i...

OBJECTIVES To assess the effect of an intra-articular presentation of stress (heat shock) proteins (hsp) on joint inflammation. METHODS Wistar rats were sensitised with a suspension of heat killed Mycobacterium tuberculosis in oil in the scruff of the neck and challenged intra-articularly with stress protein or M tuberculosis preparations. Inflammation was assessed by joint swelling and, usin...

Resuscitation promoting factor E (RpfE) is one of the five Rpf-like proteins in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis). These Rpf-like proteins are secretory, which make them candidates for recognition by the host immune system. In this study, the RpfE gene was amplified from M. tuberculosis, cloned into the expression vectors pDE22 and pPRO EXHT, and were expressed in Mycobacterium vacca...