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Infection and Immunity, September 1999, p. 4586-4593, Vol. 67, No. 9
Department of Infectious Diseases and
Microbiology, Imperial College School of Medicine, St. Mary's
Campus, London W2 1PG, United Kingdom
Received 17 September 1998/Returned for modification 30 October
1998/Accepted 14 June 1999
Protective immunity to mycobacterial infection is incompletely
understood but probably involves the coordinated interaction of
multiple cell types and cytokines. With the aim of developing assays
that might provide a surrogate measure of protective immunity, we have
investigated the use of recombinant mycobacteria carrying luciferase
reporter enzymes to assess the effectiveness of antimycobacterial immunity in model systems. Measurement of luminescence was shown to
provide a rapid and simple alternative to the counting of CFU as a
means of monitoring mycobacterial viability. We describe optimization
of a luciferase reporter strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and demonstrate its application for the study of mycobacterial interactions with host cells in tissue culture and the
rapid assessment of vaccine efficacy in a murine model.
0019-9567/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Assessment of Immunity to Mycobacterial
Infection with Luciferase Reporter Constructs

*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, Imperial College School of
Medicine, St. Mary's Campus, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG, United
Kingdom. Phone: 44-171-594 3956. Fax: 44-171 262 6299. E-mail:
v.snewin{at}ic.ac.uk.
Present address: Department of Microbiology, The Aga Khan
University, Karachi 74800, Pakistan.
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