Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting - November 16-20, 2015

Biophysics in the Understanding, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Infectious Diseases Speaker Abstracts

Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Growth in Dead Infected Cells Results in a Positive Feedback Loop Driving Additional Cycles of Host Cell Death Deeqa Mahamed 1 , Steven Skroch 1 , Lance Oom 1 , Gopelkrishna Sreejit 1 , Sameshnee Chinnasamy 1 , Oana Catinas 1 , Myshnee Naicker 1 , Sanisha Rampersad 1 , Colisile Mathonsi 1 , Jessica Hunter 1 , Alex Pym 1 , Gil Lustig 1 , Alexander Sigal 1,2 . 1 KwaZulu Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV, Durban, South Africa, 2 Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin, Germany. Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes heterogeneous infection in the same lung, ranging from infection foci where infection is controlled to foci with active infection and host cell necrosis. To understand what causes this heterogeneity, we used long-term live cell imaging to follow infection of human macrophages. I will discuss our yet unpublished results indicating that initiation of a cascade of cell death involving positive feedback provides a mechanism for the co- existence of active and quiescent infection foci within the same individual.

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