The roles of the potassium-uptake systems, Trk and Kdp, in the extracellular and intracellular growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Abstract

In his thesis, The roles of the potassium-uptake systems, Trk and Kdp, in the extracellular and intracellular growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mr Osman investigated the roles of the major potassium-uptake transporters utilized by the dangerous bacterial pathogen, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, during bacterial growth. This necessitated generating an Mtb triple-gene-knockout strain in which these potassium transporter-encoding genes were selectively inactivated using a homologous recombination procedure, whereafter the functional roles of these transporters were probed by phenotypic characterisation of the mutant strain extracellularly in planktonic and biofilm cultures and intracellularly in macrophages. He demonstrated that the mutagenesis tools were effective in generating an Mtb triple-gene-knockout mutant strain. Deletion of these transporters affected bacterial growth in the three environments, which manifested as an increase in planktonic growth, attenuation of biofilm formation and a decrease in macrophage intracellular survival. The findings demonstrated the essentiality of these bacterial transporters during various bacterial growth stages, underscoring their potential as novel drug and vaccine targets.