De novo histidine biosynthesis protects Mycobacterium tuberculosis from host IFN-γ mediated histidine starvation

Abstract

Dwivedy and Ashraf et al. use a hisD knockout strain of M. tuberculosis to show that the mouse immune system controls and eliminates the hisD knockout strain by inducing an IFNγ-dependent depletion of host histidine. These results suggest a link between histidine metabolism and the pathogenesis of M. tuberculosis infection.