Triclosan inhibition of mycobacterial InhA in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: yeast mitochondria as a novel platform for in vivo antimycolate assays.

AIMS: To demonstrate the suitability of yeast to act as a novel biotechnological platform for conducting in vivo inhibition assays using drugs with low efficacies towards their mycobacterial targets, such as occurs in the situation with triclosan and InhA. METHODS AND
RESULTS: A surrogate yeast host represented by Saccharomyces cerevisiae etr1Delta cells lacking Etr1p, the 2-trans-enoyl-thioester reductase of mitochondrial type 2 fatty acid synthase (FASII), was designed to rely on the Mycobacterium tuberculosis FASII enzyme InhA. Although InhA is 10,000 times less sensitive to the antimicrobial drug triclosan than is bacterial FabI, the respiratory growth of yeast cells depending on InhA was severely affected on glycerol medium containing triclosan.
CONCLUSIONS: The yeast system could detect enzyme inhibition despite the use of a drug with only low efficacy. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: Tuberculosis affects a third of the human population, and InhA is a major drug target for combating this disease. InhA is inhibited by isoniazid, but triclosan-derived compounds are presently being developed as antimycolates. A demonstration of triclosan inhibition of InhA in yeast represents a meaningful variation in studying this effect in mycobacteria, because it occurred without the potentially confusing aspects of perturbing protein-protein interactions which are presumed vital to mycobacterial FASII, inactivating other important enzymes or eliciting a dedicated transcriptional response in Myco. tuberculosis.