ABSTRACTMycobacterium tuberculosiscauses persistent infection due to its ability to evade host immune responses.M. tuberculosisinduces Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) signaling, which influences immune responses toM. tuberculosis. TLR2 agonists expressed byM. tuberculosisinclude lipoproteins (e.g., LprG), the glycolipid phosphatidylinositol mannoside 6 (PIM6), and the lipoglycan lipomannan (LM). AnotherM. tuberculosislipoglycan, mannose-capped lipoarabinomannan (ManLAM), lacks TLR2 agonist activity. In contrast, PILAM, fromMycobacterum smegmatis, does have TLR2 agonist activity. Our understanding of howM. tuberculosislipoproteins and lipoglycans interact with TLR2 is limited, and binding of these molecules to TLR2 has not been measured directly. Here, we directly measuredM. tuberculosislipoprotein and lipoglycan binding to TLR2 and its partner receptor, TLR1. LprG, LAM, and LM were all found to bind to TLR2 in the absence of TLR1, but not to TLR1 in the absence of TLR2. Trimolecular interactions were revealed by binding of TLR2-LprG or TLR2-PIM6 complexes to TLR1, whereas binding of TLR2 to TLR1 was not detected in the absence of the lipoprotein or glycolipid. ManLAM exhibited low affinity for TLR2 in comparison to PILAM, LM, and LprG, which correlated with reduced ability of ManLAM to induce TLR2-mediated extracellular-signal-regulated kinase (ERK) activation and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) secretion in macrophages. We provide the first direct affinity measurement and kinetic analysis ofM. tuberculosislipoprotein and lipoglycan binding to TLR2. Our results demonstrate that binding affinity correlates with the functional ability of agonists to induce TLR2 signaling.
Activation of Toll-like receptor 2 by a novel preparation of cell wall skeleton from Mycobacterium bovis BCG Tokyo (SMP-105) sufficiently enhances immune responses against tumors