Sandrine Ollagnier & Olivier Hamelin​

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of Tuberculosis, contains in its genome around 60 open reading frames encoding putative Fe-S proteins, which have diverse essential roles in Mtb metabolism. Among these, the Fe-S clusters-containing WhiB proteins allow Mtb to adjust its metabolism to survive stress conditions in macrophages and to enter dormancy. Interestingly, Mtb contains a unique system dedicated to Fe-S clusters assembly, namely the SUF system (lien en haut) reported essential for Mtb growth. Therefore, interfering with Fe-S cluster biogenesis in Mtb might be a powerful and novel strategy for eliminating TB through preventing the pathogen’s ability to synthesize Fe-S clusters. Importantly, the SUF machinery is absent in humans where Fe-S biogenesis is sustained by other machineries. To identify inhibitors of Suf machinery in Mtb we target Fe-S clusters with a two-pronged approaches, a targeted and a large scale approaches.

​