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M. tuberculosis passes the litmus test

Nature Medicine volume 14, pages 809–810 (2008)Cite this article

One of the body's key defenders against infection—the activated macrophage—engulfs bacteria and destroys them with an acid cocktail inside lysosomes. Mycobacterium tuberculosis seems to have evolved a strategy to cope with this threat (pages 849–854).

At 1 × 10−24 grams, the hydrogen atom hardly seems capable of throwing its weight around. Yet add a positive charge—or better still, two or three—and it becomes one of the chief chemical weapons deployed by macrophages to kill ingested microorganisms.

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Figure 1: Survival tactics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb).

Katie Ris-Vicari

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. John D. MacMicking is in the Section of Microbial Pathogenesis, Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, 295 Congress Avenue, New Haven, Connecticut 06510, USA. john.macmicking@yale.edu,

    John D MacMicking

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  1. John D MacMicking
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MacMicking, J. M. tuberculosis passes the litmus test. Nat Med 14, 809–810 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0808-809

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