To Understand the Role of Heme Molecules in the Survival and Pathogenesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Swati Meena and Laxman S Meena * CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Mall Road, Delhi, India * Corresponding author: Laxman S Meena, CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Mall Road, Delhi-110007, India, Tel: 011-27666156; Fax: 011-27667471; E-mail: Laxmansm72@yahoo.com Received date: January 31, 2017; Accepted date: February 17, 2017; Published date: February 24, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Meena LS, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an aerobic gram positive pathogen which causes deadly disease called tuberculosis (TB) which is still a major threat to life. Mycobacterium tuberculosis Pathogen enters in host by inhalation of air because these pathogens are present in air droplets released by other TB infected persons. It ultimately reaches to lung alveoli and gives rise to primary TB. In macrophages Mycobacterium replicates itself and increases its number in host cell. Artemisinin is a drug obtained from the plant Artemisia which target the heme molecule in mycobacterium and stop its replication. Keywords: Mycobacterium tuberculosis; H37Rv; Rv0203; Heme molecule; Artemisia afra Abbreviation Mtb: Mycobacterium tuberculosis; M Fold cells: Micro Fold Cells; His: Histidine; CNS: Central Nervous System; E. coli: Escherichia coli; S. aureus: Staphylococcus aureus; WHO: World Health Organisation; Tyr: Tyrosine Introduction Mycobacterium is gram positive and aerobic bacteria. Mycobacterium strains are present in air and enter in host through nasal inhalation as these pathogens are present in air droplets which are released by sneezing or coughing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infected person and ultimately reach to the lungs which infect lungs in primary infection and lymphoid organs in secondary infection in lymphoid organs. In body circulation pathogen enters by respiratory tract through air droplets and attack on macrophages for its replication. Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv is a highly successful pathogen and it successfully attacks on host [1]. Besides respiration, this pathogen also enters in host circulation by Micro fold cells. Microfold cell can directly mediate primary infection by Mycobacterium and facilitate distribution beyond the mucosa [2] as shown in Figure 1. According to WHO report of 2016, In 2015, 6.1 million new T.B. cases were notiied to national authorities and reported to WHO and an increment was observed in T.B. from 2013-2015 [3]. Iron is the molecule which is required for the survival of this pathogen because it is a co-factor for at least 40 enzymes in mycobacterium and it also maintains the iron homeostasis [4]. he virulence of Mycobacterium depends on its ability to assimilate iron; it synthesizes and utilizes siderophores (low-molecular-weight iron chelators) to sequester iron [5]. he uptake of oxygen is possible only when the heme is in ferrous (Fe 2+ ) in host circulation. Reduction is deined as a loss of O 2 (CO 2 + C→2CO), an increase in hydrogen (C + 2H 2 →CH 4 ) or a gain of electrons (O 2 +e – →O 2 •– ). On phagocytosis of Mycobacterium, lung macrophages and neutrophils produce large quantities of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). NADPH oxidase catalyses one-electron reduction of O 2 using NADPH as electron donor, generating O2 •– 2O 2 + NADPH → O2 •− + NADP + + H + [6]. Figure 1: Mycobacterium infection in host. Mycobacterium has developed so many mechanisms to uptake iron, one of them is it uses siderophore molecules to scavenge iron from host body and another way of iron uptake is through heme molecule as shown in Figure 2. As we have discussed in above lines that heme is the molecule which accepts only nascent oxygen to generate aerobic environment for survival of pathogen. Heme is a protein molecule which might be translated by a gene Rv0203 in pathogen. Rv0203 has a unique fold and it is highly atypical in heme transfer proteins. It has alpha-helical structure contains dimer of dimmers where each monomer consists 5 Journal of Tuberculosis and Therapeutics Meena and Meena, J Tuberc Ther 2017, 2:1 Short Communication OMICS International J Tuberc her, an open access journal Volume 2 • Issue 1 • 1000104