An Inhibitor of Exported <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> Glutamine Synthetase Selectively Blocks the Growth of Pathogenic Mycobacteria in Axenic Culture and in Human Monocytes: Extracellular Proteins as Potential Novel Drug Targets

Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other pathogenic mycobacteria export abundant quantities of proteins into their extracellular milieu when growing either axenically or within phagosomes of host cells. One major extracellular protein, the enzyme glutamine synthetase, is of particular interest because of its link to pathogenicity. Pathogenic mycobacteria, but not nonpathogenic mycobacteria, export large amounts of this protein. Interestingly, export of the enzyme is associated with the presence of a poly-l-glutamate/glutamine structure in the mycobacterial cell wall. In this study, we investigated the influence of glutamine synthetase inhibitors on the growth of pathogenic and nonpathogenic mycobacteria and on the poly-l-glutamate/glutamine cell wall structure. The inhibitor l-methionine-S-sulfoximine rapidly inactivated purified M. tuberculosis glutamine synthetase, which was 100-fold more sensitive to this inhibitor than a representative mammalian glutamine synthetase. Added to cultures of pathogenic mycobacteria, l-methionine- S-sulfoximine rapidly inhibited extracellular glutamine synthetase in a concentration-dependent manner but had only a minimal effect on cellula