, 2004). The previously designed approach to produce and resuscitate NC cells was applied to study M. smegmatis

strain with inactivated hlp gene. Our experiments revealed that M. smegmatisΔhlp strain and its derivatives developed in the modified Hartman-de-Bont medium (without K+) at similar growth rates compared with the wild-type strain (data not shown). At the stationary phase, the Δhlp strain entered the NC state (0 CFU) later than the Wt-pMind strain with Talazoparib concentration the empty plasmid (90–96 vs. 68–70 h) (Fig. 1a) or wild type (not shown). Complemented strain Δhlp∷hlp harboring the hlp gene on the plasmid entered the NC state only 2 h later than the Wt-pMind strain (data not shown). Next, NC cells of Wt-pMind and Δhlp Sirolimus strains

were tested for their ability to resuscitate in the presence of recombinant M. luteus RpfSm protein, which appeared to be more active and stable during storage compared with full-length M. luteus Rpf (unpublished data). Contrary to Wt-pMind, NC cells of the strain Δhlp failed to resuscitate in the liquid medium with RpfSm (Fig. 2). NC cells of the complemented strain Δhlp∷hlp were partially resuscitated by RpfSm (Fig. 2). Therefore, the lack of Hlp resulted in transition of mycobacterial cells to an irreversibly NC (or likely, moribund) state under chosen conditions (K+ depletion) but not to a resuscitatable dormancy. Taken together, these data led to the conclusion that Hlp does not affect the onset of the transition to nonculturability but Carnitine dehydrogenase seems to be essential for cell viability at a later stage of dormancy. It was noteworthy that the strain Δhlp∷rpf, lacking the hlp gene and harboring the plasmid-carried rpf gene, substantially differed from the Δhlp in culturability when cultivated in the modified Hartman-de-Bont medium. In particular, Δhlp∷rpf cells maintained the ability to produce colonies even during a prolonged (180 h) stationary phase, as opposed to Δhlp and Δhlp-AGH strains (Fig. 1b). However, insertion of the rpf gene to

wild-type M. smegmatis (Wt-AGR) caused the development of NC state of cells incubated in the same medium and conditions (Fig. 1b), as reported previously (Shleeva et al., 2004). To ensure that the maintenance of plateability in long-stored Δhlp∷rpf cultures was indeed due to Rpf production, we studied the Δhlp∷rpf mut strain (Table 1) with the rpf gene disrupted by site-directed mutagenesis (Mukamolova et al., 2006). Our experiments demonstrated that mutations in the rpf gene restored the ability to adopt the NC state under the given cultivation conditions (Fig. 1b). Thus, the combined action of a downshift of Hlp and an upshift of Rpf greatly prolonged the ability of M. smegmatis to endure starvation in a completely culturable state, revealing opposite effects of two proteins on the formation of ‘nonculturability’. Earlier we found that M.