Comparative proteomic analysis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain H37Rv versus H37Ra

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) H37Ra is an attenuated tubercle bacillus closely related to the virulent type strain MTB H37Rv. In spite of extensive study, variation in virulence between the MTB H37Rv and MTB H37Ra strains is still to be understood. The difference in protein expression or structure due to mutation may probably be an important factor for the virulence property of MTB H37Rv strain.

In this study, a whole proteome comparison between these two strains was carried out using bioinformatics approaches to elucidate differences in their protein sequences.

On comparison of whole proteome using NCBI standalone BLAST program between these two strains, 3759 identical proteins in both the strains out of 4003 proteins were revealed in MTB H37Rv and 4034 proteins were revealed in MTB H37Ra; 244 proteins of MTB H37Rv and 260 proteins of MTB H37Ra were found to be non-identical. A total of 172 proteins were identified with mutations (Insertions/deletions/substitutions) in MTB H37Ra while 53 proteins of MTB H37Rv and 85 proteins of MTB H37Ra were found to be distinct. Among 244 non-identical proteins, 19 proteins were reported to have an important biological function; In this study, mutation was shown in these proteins of MTB H37Ra.

This study reports the protein differences with mutations between MTB H37Rv and H37Ra, which may help in better understanding the pathogenesis and virulence properties of MTB H37Rv.