In contrast, in the dendritic cells M. smegmatis infection induced an important accumulation of ROS when compared to zymosan and BCG infected cells (Figure 9B). These results support the argument that dendritic cells are more susceptible to infection-induced apoptosis due to their capacity to generate high levels of ROS due to sustained NOX2 activity when compared to the rapid induction and inactivation of NOX2 in macrophages[39]. Figure 8 Differences in apoptosis induced by facultative-pathogenic AZD5363 mouse and non-pathogenic mycobacteria in BALB/c and C57Bl/6

dendritic cells. C57Bl/6 (A) and BALB/c (B) bone marrowderived dendritic cells (BMDD) were infected at an MOI of 10:1 with M. smegmatis (Msme), M. bovis BCG or left untreated (UT). After 2 h cells were washed and incubated in infection media with 100 μg/ml gentamycin for an additional 20 h. The percentage of hypodiploid cells

of a total of 10,000 cells was determined see more using the flow cytometry. The values of the mean and standard deviation of three independent experiments are shown. Figure 9 Differences in ROS Tucidinostat concentration response to mycobacterial infection between C57Bl/6 macrophages and dendritic cells. Cells were infected as described in figure 8 and ROS were detected 2 h after infection using dihydroethidium (DHE). A. BMDM or B. BMDD left untreated (UT), infected with BCG, M. smegmatis (Msme) or incubated with opsonized zymosan particles for 4 h or 24 h. The increase in DHE mediated fluorescence (FL-2) was analyzed by flow cytometry of 10,000 total cells. A representative of three independent experiments is shown. Conclusions We hypothesized that the attenuation of non-pathogenic versus facultative-pathogenic mycobacteria could be explained in part by their strong induction of an innate immune response. Indeed, here we demonstrate that two representative strains of non-pathogenic mycobacterial species induce a stronger inflammatory response as measured by the cytokines TNF and IL-12. They also induce an increased apoptotic response in BMDMs and BMDDs. The PI-LAM and Man-LAM cell wall components Tangeritin of non-pathogenic and facultative-pathogenic mycobacteria, respectively,

were analyzed. They could be a reason for the increased innate immune response since PI-LAM induces increased cytokine secretion and apoptosis response when compared to Man-LAM. We propose that the different mycobacterial species can be characterized by the following three functional groups: 1) Nonpathogenic which have no mechanisms to inhibit immune responses and contain a lot of PAMPs to induce a response   2) facultative-pathogenic mycobacteria have few if any mechanisms to inhibit host cell immune responses but have evolved to mask some of their PAMP so they do not induce a strong innate response and finally   3) highly adapted virulent mycobacteria mask their PAMP and have mechanisms to inhibit host immune responses   Methods Bacteria M. smegmatis strain (mc2 155) was obtained from Dr. William Jacobs Jr., and M.