PUBLICATION
Primary tuberculous mycobacterial granulomas provide a niche for superinfecting Mycobacterium abscessus
- Authors
- Wee, D., Pandey, M., Chen, Y., Lorenzini, P.A., Chow, E.W., Wang, Y., Singhal, A., Oehlers, S.H.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-251129-11
- Date
- 2025
- Source
- Nature communications 16: 1076010760 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Oehlers, Stefan, Pandey, Manitosh, Wee, Denise
- Keywords
- none
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Aspergillus fumigatus/pathogenicity
- Candida/growth & development
- Disease Models, Animal
- Granuloma*/immunology
- Granuloma*/microbiology
- Granuloma*/pathology
- Macrophages/immunology
- Macrophages/microbiology
- Mycobacterium Infections, Nontuberculous*/immunology
- Mycobacterium Infections, Nontuberculous*/microbiology
- Mycobacterium Infections, Nontuberculous*/pathology
- Mycobacterium abscessus*/growth & development
- Mycobacterium abscessus*/pathogenicity
- Mycobacterium marinum/pathogenicity
- Mycobacterium smegmatis/pathogenicity
- Virulence
- Zebrafish/microbiology
- PubMed
- 41315235 Full text @ Nat. Commun.
Citation
Wee, D., Pandey, M., Chen, Y., Lorenzini, P.A., Chow, E.W., Wang, Y., Singhal, A., Oehlers, S.H. (2025) Primary tuberculous mycobacterial granulomas provide a niche for superinfecting Mycobacterium abscessus. Nature communications. 16:1076010760.
Abstract
Prior and concurrent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection are among the most important susceptibility factors for nontuberculous mycobacterial infection in Asia. Here we model this process in zebrafish with a primary Mycobacterium marinum infection followed by a secondary M. abscessus infection. We demonstrate preferential growth of secondary M. abscessus infection inside primary M. marinum granulomas. Granuloma-resident secondary M. abscessus is protected from macrophage-mediated immune control and antibiotic therapy. We find other opportunistic pathogens Mycobacterium smegmatis, Aspergillus fumigatus, and Candida auris are also able to colonize and preferentially grow inside primary M. marinum granulomas. Rapid growth of M. abscessus is driven by feeding on caseum produced by the primary M. marinum ESX-1 virulence program in a nutritionally separate niche from M. marinum. In this work we show tuberculous granulomas may provide a long-lasting niche for the growth of the opportunistic pathogen M. abscessus.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping