title: Nitric oxide and Mycobacterium leprae pathogenicity.
abstract: Leprosy is an old, still dreaded infectious disease caused by the obligate intracellular bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. During the infectious process, M. leprae is faced with the host macrophagic environment, where the oxidative stress and NO release, combined with low pH, low pO2, and high pCO2, contribute to limit the growth of the bacilli. Comparative genomics has unraveled massive gene decay in M. leprae, linking the strictly parasitic lifestyle with the reductive genome evolution. Compared with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis, the leprosy bacillus has lost most of the genes involved in the detoxification of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species. The very low reactivity of the unique truncated hemoglobin retained by M. leprae could account for the susceptibility of this exceptionally slow-growing microbe to NO.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University Roma Tre, Viale G. Marconi 446, I-00146 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Visca
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Fabozzi
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Milani
authors.forename: Martino
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bolognesi
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ascenzi
mesh_terms: D009166:Mycobacterium leprae / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D009569:Nitric Oxide / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D009569:Nitric Oxide