The ability ofMycobacterium tuberculosisto grow in macrophages is critical to the virulence of this important pathogen. One wayM. tuberculosisis thought to maintain a hospitable niche in macrophages is by arresting the normal process of phagosomes maturing into acidified phagolysosomes. The process of phagosome maturation arrest byM. tuberculosisis not fully understood, and there has remained a need to firmly establish a requirement for phagosome maturation arrest forM. tuberculosisgrowth in macrophages. Other intracellular pathogens that control the phagosomal environment use specialized protein export systems to deliver effectors of phagosome trafficking to the host cell. InM. tuberculosis, the accessory SecA2 system is a specialized protein export system that is required for intracellular growth in macrophages. In studying the importance of the SecA2 system in macrophages, we discovered that SecA2 is required for phagosome maturation arrest. Shortly after infection, phagosomes containing a ΔsecA2mutant ofM. tuberculosiswere more acidified and showed greater association with markers of late endosomes than phagosomes containing wild-typeM. tuberculosis. We further showed that inhibitors of phagosome acidification rescued the intracellular growth defect of the ΔsecA2mutant, which demonstrated that the phagosome maturation arrest defect of the ΔsecA2mutant is responsible for the intracellular growth defect. This study demonstrates the importance of phagosome maturation arrest forM. tuberculosisgrowth in macrophages, and it suggests there are effectors of phagosome maturation that are exported into the host environment by the accessory SecA2 system.
Multicopy suppression: an approach to understanding intracellular functioning of the protein export system.
