Assessment of immunity to mycobacterial infection with luciferase reporterconstructs

Protective immunity to mycobacterial infection is incompletely understood b ut probably involves the coordinated interaction of multiple cell types and cytokines, With the aim of developing assays that might provide a surrogat e measure of protective immunity, rye have investigated the use of recombin ant mycobacteria carrying luciferase reporter enzymes to assess the effecti veness of antimycobacterial immunity in model systems. Measurement of lumin escence was shown to provide a rapid and simple alternative to the counting of CFU as a means of monitoring mycobacterial viability. We describe optim ization of a luciferase reporter strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and d emonstrate 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.