Omics for TB Disease Progression (OTB)

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From initial infection to the onset of symptoms, tuberculosis (TB) is a remarkably complex disease. This proposal tests the concept that behaviors of host and pathogen are coordinated by interwoven regulatory networks, and that the outcome of infection (bacterial containment or active disease) is the product of many network-network interactions that vary both spatially and temporally. If so, then perturbing specific networks will both illuminate the topology of the larger network and allow us to define the steps and components critical to infection outcome. Our consortium of two projects and four Cores will test this hypothesis and reveal key features of TB disease progression in an iterative cycle: perturb carefully chosen subnetworks within both MTB and host; collect matched omics data sets; model, predict, and validate with new experiments. Project 1 exploits a vast repository of mutant mice to screen novel candidate genes derived from a unique South African clinical cohort for effects on TB disease progression. Project 2 begins with a novel in vivo genetic screen to identify MTB regulators that affect disease progression in lungs. In each case, once key regulators are identified, we will quantitate and characterize the changes in infected cell types and determine the specific points in disease progression where particular mutants show altered responses. For both projects, we leverage our extensive cache of preliminary data to perform detailed systems analyses of key genes and their predicted regulons using bone marrow macrophages infected ex vivo. We will collect host and MTB transcriptomes and global protein level changes from matched samples. We will also perform condition-specific ChlP-seq on key MTB regulators from within infected macrophages. These data will fuel modeling of both the bacterial and host response networks, predictions from which will drive a new round of mutant evaluation, omics-scale data collection and additional modeling. Our ultimate modeling Aim in this proposal is a novel integrated host/MTB network model, human relevance of which will be validated in primary human macrophages with mutant MTB and relevant host genes dis-regulated via RNAi.