The role of glutamine oxoglutarate aminotransferase and glutamate dehydrogenase in nitrogen metabolism in Mycobacterium bovis BCG

CITATION: Viljoen, A. J. et al. 2013. The role of glutamine oxoglutarate aminotransferase and glutamate dehydrogenase in nitrogen metabolism in Mycobacterium bovis BCG. PLoS ONE, 8(12):e84452, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0084452.The original publication is available at http://journals.plos.org/plosoneRecent evidence suggests that the regulation of intracellular glutamate levels could play an important role in the ability of pathogenic slow-growing mycobacteria to grow in vivo. However, little is known about the in vitro requirement for the enzymes which catalyse glutamate production and degradation in the slow-growing mycobacteria, namely; glutamine oxoglutarate aminotransferase (GOGAT) and glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH), respectively. We report that allelic replacement of the Mycobacterium bovis BCG gltBD-operon encoding for the large (gltB) and small (gltD) subunits of GOGAT with a hygromycin resistance cassette resulted in glutamate auxotrophy and that deletion of the GDH encoding-gene (gdh) led to a marked growth deficiency in the presence of L-glutamate as a sole nitrogen source as well as reduction in growth when cultured in an excess of L-asparagine.http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0084452Publisher's versio