Several mycobacterial species have been used for the screening of chemical libraries with the aim of avoiding natural resistance mechanisms developed by specific species. In this way, different compounds with antibacterial activity have been identified. Mutants resistant to each compound have been isolated and their genomes have been sequenced. The comparison of these sequences with the wild type strain genome will allow us to identify the targets for the antibacterial activity and the mechanism of action of the molecules. This will be instrumental for improving molecules for a better antibacterial activity with emphasis on tuberculosis.

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a major driving force of bacterial diversification. For mycobacteria, a special type of HGT was described in Mycobacterium smegmatis which is linked to distributive conjugal transfer (Gray et al., PLoS Biology, 2013). In the current project we are trying to reproduce the results and explore the process.

Human macrophages are the main cell target of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the etiologic agent of tuberculosis. Once phagocytosed, bacilli escape bactericidal functions of macrophages and they multiply inside the cell. Understanding interactions between bacilli and human phagocytes is primordial to develop new strategies to combat tuberculosis. We propose a project aiming at deciphering cell-cell communications between infected cells and non-infected cells. We will use the transcriptomic and the proteomic approaches to discriminate the global response of these differents sub-populations. To our knowledge, this work represents the first study that combines two different levels for the identification of a specific response of infected-cells and neighboring non-infected cells. This study would determine cellular markers of a Mtb signature.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an extremely successful, aerosol-transmitted human pathogen, thought to have evolved from a Mycobacterium canettii-like progenitor. In contrast, extant M. canettii strains are rare, genetically diverse and geographically restricted mycobacteria of only marginal epidemiological importance. Comparative genome studies of several Mycobacterium canettii strains previously identified genetic events that contribute to the contrasting evolutionary success observed between M. canettii and M. tuberculosis strains. In this project we now focus on the genetic factors required for the emergence of highly specialised, virulent tuberculosis bacilli.

The CRBIP, Centre de Ressources Biologiques de l’Institut Pasteur, is a structure created in 2001 that encompasses the Pasteurian culture collections: the CIP (bacteria collection), the PCC (cyanobacteria collection), the ICAReB (human samples collection) and the Eukaryotic virus collection. Since January 2016, the CIP, has sequenced more than a thousand bacterial genomes and assembled them using the P2M pipeline. An initiative has been proposed by the CRBIP, in line with its new strategy of valorization, to annotate all genomes and make publicly available those from type strains with a private section for non-type strains that will be available to users on demand. To attain this objective, a long-term collaboration will be established between the CIP, the C3BI (Natalia Pietrosemoli's team) and the CRBIP that will start with a small project to do the draft annotation of the available bacterial genomes using the open source software, Prokka.

In our laboratory we focus on the single-cell biology of tuberculosis. Phenotypic variation helps bacterial cells to endure stressful environmental conditions, and is one of the possible causes of antibiotic persistence and chronic infections. We have recently demonstrated that phenotypic variation is indeed associated with a different response to a class of antimicrobials, in particular in subpopulations of mycobacteria experiencing different levels of DNA damage. Therefore, targeting phenotypic variation may prove to be a successful strategy to weaken the population and to make it more susceptible to antimicrobials. To probe and target phenotypic variation in mycobacteria, we use time-lapse microfluidic microscopy and spatiotemporal analysis of individual cells and microcolonies. We have recently completed a screening for compounds that target phenotypic variation, generating a large dataset of image sequences. Here we aim to develop an automated and user-friendly software for the analysis of image sequences of bacterial microcolonies. This analysis platform will serve to study not only the physiology of mycobacteria but also of other bacterial species. In conclusion, this analytical tool could be very useful for the microbiology community dealing with live single-cell imaging.

Nous souhaitons analyser les séquences de sept mutant de Mycobacterium marinum générées par l’utilisation de concentrations croissante d’un antibiotique candidat dont nous ne connaissons pas la cible. Avec ces mutants, nous essayons de connaître la cible de ce composé.

We want to automatize the merging of CSV document for data analysis purposes. We've already discussed it with Gael Millot.

Without new treatment development tuberculosis could cause about 70 million deaths by 2050, mostly due to the spread of multidrug-resistant strains. The standard drug regimen still builds on the first drugs introduced decades ago, and takes 6 months in the case of drug-sensitive tuberculosis, and up to 2 years in the case of drug-resistant tuberculosis, with heavy side effects. This long therapeutic regimen often results in patients not being able to follow it or complete it correctly, which promotes the chronicity of the infection and ultimately the onset of drug resistance. Although a few new molecules have been discovered, improving both the quality and the duration of tuberculosis chemotherapy remain pressing needs. Furthermore, the failure of chemotherapy is not only due to genetic resistance, which takes relatively long to occur, but also to the intrinsic ability of mycobacteria to diversify in discrete phenotypic states, which can endure drugs even in the absence of genetic mutations. This phenomenon, known as persistence, can eventually favor the onset of resistance, with major repercussions on disease control. In sum, tuberculosis therapy presents many challenges and in our view it is critical to study the ability of a drug or a drug combination to sterilize discrete subpopulations, which may either pre-exist in the population or result from adaptive processes. We found that, prior to drug exposure, phenotypically distinct subpopulations exist that display different drug susceptibility. In light of this, we hypothesized that phenotypic variation from cell to cell favors persistence and can consequently bring about treatment failure. Here we aim to identify molecules that reduce phenotypic variation, making the population more uniformly and rapidly susceptible to standard treatment. To this end, we developed a microfluidic system that allows us to track single cells by live imaging and to carry out a screening at the single-cell level, looking for molecules that homogenize the bacterial population and enhance the effectiveness of the standard treatment. Our approach could ultimately offer original therapeutic strategies towards better control of tuberculosis.

Label free quantification of proteins after the infection with M. tuberculosis. Macrophages isolated from seven patients were used in this study. Four conditions were compared.

Tuberculosis (TB) still remains a major public health problem with estimated 9 million incident cases and 1.5 million deaths in 2014 (WHO, Global Tuberculosis Report 2015). More worrisome is the emergence of multi drug resistance (MDR), or even extensively resistant (XDR) M. tuberculosis strains worldwide. The standardized treatment of pan-susceptible tuberculosis is the administration of two antibiotics (rifampicin and isoniazid) for six months, accompanied by two additional antibiotics (pyrazinamid and ethambutol) for the first two months. Although very efficacious, this treatment is very demanding due to the duration and the possible side effects. The treatment of MDR-TB is less standardized, with more toxic and poorly tolerated drugs, resulting in lower cure rates. Therefore, we need not only more molecules with antimycobacterial activity, but also, we urgently need new strategies to increase our therapeutic arsenal for treating MDR-TB. Only three new drugs, bedaquiline, delamanid and PA-824 have been tested in phase2/3 clinical trials.

In this context, the european funded project NAREB has been created. It brings together 14 partners from 8 EU Member and Associated States, and it aims to (i) screen different combinations of antibiotic drugs with nano-carriers (lipid, polymeric, biopolymeric) with and without targeting ligands, (ii) coload antibiotics in order to develop innovative therapeutic combination therapies (iii) test in vitro and in vivo the best therapeutic combinations. In particular, we will analyze more in-depth the effect of bedaquilin, new TB drugs and nano-carriers on the host/bacterial transcriptome using RNAseq.

Tuberculosis (TB), which is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), is the deadliest disease due to a single infectious agent. Despite considerable efforts to fight the disease, TB remains a major public health problem. Even more worrying for the future, multidrug resistant (MDR) strains of MTB are continually emerging and about 10% of people with MDR-TB have extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB). Drug-sensitive TB can be cured by a 6-month treatment using 4 antibiotics, but MDR-TB and extensively drug-resistant XDR-TB require treatment for up to 2 years with more toxic and costly second- and third-line drugs. Toxicity of these drugs is well described; it includes hepatotoxicity, liver injury, skin reactions, gastrointestinal and neurological disorders. However how MTB drugs influence the host response to MTB infection has been poorly addressed. The main goal of project is to understand how drugs interact with the host in order to improve the treatment.

Microbes are prone to rapid changes and they can either exploit or countervail their variation in a context-dependent manner. To this purpose, both genetic diversity and non-genetic phenotypic variation exist. However, while the overall mutational evolution occurs over lengthy timescales, epigenetic changes take place on a large scale and more rapidly. Collectively this implies that the diversity we observe is profoundly driven by non-genetic variation. This is particularly relevant for the WHO Priority Pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, whose lack of lateral gene transfer and low mutation rate make phenotypic variation an important means of adaptation to stressful conditions. A few studies, including ours, have begun to explore this phenomenon at the single-cell level in M. tuberculosis in axenic and host conditions, which are technically very challenging. This project is based on the assumption that M. tuberculosis can successfully endure harsh environmental conditions thanks to its phenotypic variation. In our view a better understanding of the drivers of phenotypic variation will improve the design and development of original strategies for tuberculosis control. Here we investigate the physiology of M. tuberculosis at the single-cell and subpopulation scale, striving to demystify the bases of phenotypic diversity and the implications for adaptation and persistence. Previously we examined by real-time imaging a fluorescent reporter of ribosomal expression (rRNA-GFP) as a gauge for cellular activity, and found that M. tuberculosis displays phenotypic heterogeneity under optimal growth conditions, which is enhanced in the host, in long-term stationary phase and upon drug exposure. Remarkably we could also detect subpopulations of quiescent bacilli, whose molecular characteristics have yet to be determined, which is the aim of this project. Here we constructed a dual fluorescent reporter of metabolic activity/quiescence in M. tuberculosis, by using our rRNA-GFP reporter as a background strain, further modified with a red fluorescent marker of cellular quiescence. We carried out snapshot microscopy and single-cell analysis during optimal growth conditions as compared with stressful conditions. We found that the cell-activity marker decreases, whereas the cell-quiescence marker is induced under different host-mimetic conditions. We also observed significant intracellular variation during infection assays. Now we envision carrying out a comprehensive analysis of M. tuberculosis phenotypic variation by RNA sequencing. We aim to reveal the molecular differences between subpopulations of bacilli that exhibit discrete metabolic potential, based on their fluorescence output. We have recreated the most interesting conditions on a bulk scale, and sorted active versus quiescent subpopulations, aiming to compare their transcriptional profiles, and to ultimately identify subpopulation-specific biomarkers of persistence towards more accurate diagnostics.

Without new treatment development tuberculosis could cause about 70 million deaths by 2050, mostly due to the spread of multidrug-resistant strains. The standard drug regimen still builds on the first drugs introduced decades ago, and takes 6 months in the case of drug-sensitive tuberculosis, and up to 2 years in the case of drug-resistant tuberculosis, with heavy side effects. This long therapeutic regimen often results in patients not being able to follow it or complete it correctly, which promotes the chronicity of the infection and ultimately the onset of drug resistance. Although a few new molecules have been discovered, improving both the quality and the duration of tuberculosis chemotherapy remain pressing needs. Furthermore, the failure of chemotherapy is not only due to genetic resistance, which takes relatively long to occur, but also to the intrinsic ability of mycobacteria to diversify in discrete phenotypic states, which can endure drugs even in the absence of genetic mutations. This phenomenon, known as persistence, can eventually favor the onset of resistance, with major repercussions on disease control. In sum, tuberculosis therapy presents many challenges and in our view it is critical to study the ability of a drug or a drug combination to sterilize discrete subpopulations, which may either pre-exist in the population or result from adaptive processes. We found that, prior to drug exposure, phenotypically distinct subpopulations exist that display different drug susceptibility. In light of this, we hypothesized that phenotypic variation from cell to cell favors persistence and can consequently bring about treatment failure. Here we aim to identify molecules that reduce phenotypic variation, making the population more uniformly and rapidly susceptible to standard treatment. To this end, we developed a microfluidic system that allows us to track single cells by live imaging and to carry out a screening at the single-cell level, looking for molecules that homogenize the bacterial population and enhance the effectiveness of the standard treatment. Our approach could ultimately offer original therapeutic strategies towards better control of tuberculosis.