To feast among the starving: facultative anaerobiosis by Mycobacterium avium.

Mycobacterium avium, a slow-growing bacterium predominantly found in brackish water and soil, can cause chronic infections in animal and human populations. Understanding strategies by which bacterial pathogens adapt to the host immune response through metabolic remodelling and by employing various methods of respiration is crucial in reducing the infection rate. The method of respiration is especially important for environmental bacteria like M. avium which can survive in demanding environments.

Mycobacterial genomes are highly GC-biased resulting in greater frequency of ambiguous gene attributes. These ambiguous terms including 'hypothetical', 'putative' or 'probable' have made identifying the key metabolic pathways and thus predicting respiratory mechanisms by M. avium and potentially other taxonomically related species being obscured.

In this project we will investigate the ability of the non-tuberculous mycobacterium, (NTM), M. avium to survive in environmentally challenging conditions. For M. avium to proliferate in the demanding conditions, we predict that various respiratory complexes will be involved to regulate metabolism. From this research, we aim to have a better understanding of where M. avium can be found with the future purpose to reduce infections in susceptible populations.