Endometrium is one of the most commonly affected sites in genital tuberculosis. The understanding of its interaction with the tubercle bacilli is of paramount importance for studying the pathogenesis of this disease. The main objective of this work was to study the interplay between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and host endometrial epithelial cell lines (Ishikawa cell lines), and to identify the differentially expressed genes upon tuberculosis infection. To study this, suppression subtractive hybridization library was constructed using M. tuberculosis H37Rv-infected Ishikawa cell line harvested 24 h post-infection. The subtracted cDNA library was screened, and 105 differentially expressed genes were identified and grouped based on their functions. Since ubiquitination process has gained importance in targeting M. tuberculosis to xenophagy, ubiquitin system genes obtained in the library were selected, and time course analysis of their gene expression was performed. We observed an upregulation of mkrn1 and cops5 and downregulation of zfp91, ndfip2, ube2f, rnft1, psmb6, and psmd13 at 24 h post-infection. From the results obtained, we surmise that ubiquitination pathway genes may have roles in combating tuberculosis which are yet uncharted.
Keywords: Endometrial cells; Ishikawa cell lines; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; Subtractive cDNA library; Ubiquitin.