Proteomic analysis of extracellular vesicles derived from Mycobacterium tuberculosis

The release of extracellular vesicles, also known as outer membrane vesicles, membrane vesicles, exosomes, and microvesicles, is an evolutionarily conserved phenomenon from bacteria to eukaryotes. It has been reported that Mycobacterium tuberculosis releases extracellular vesicles harboring immunologically active molecules, and these extracellular vesicles have been suggested to be applicable in vaccine development and biomarker discovery. However, the comprehensive proteomic analysis has not been performed for M. tuberculosis extracellular vesicles. In this study, we identified a total of 287 vesicular proteins by four LC-MS/MS analyses with high confidence. In addition, we identified several vesicular proteins associated with the virulence of M. tuberculosis. This comprehensive proteome profile will help elucidate the pathogenic mechanism of M. tuberculosis. The data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD001160 (http://proteomecentral.proteomexchange.org/dataset/PXD001160).