RESEARCH ARTICLE Kasugamycin potentiates rifampicin and limits emergence of resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis by specifically decreasing mycobacterial mistranslation Swarnava Chaudhuri1†, Liping Li2†, Matthew Zimmerman2, Yuemeng Chen1, Yu-Xiang Chen1, Melody N Toosky1,3, Michelle Gardner3, Miaomiao Pan1, Yang-Yang Li1, Qingwen Kawaji1, Jun-Hao Zhu1, Hong-Wei Su1, Amanda J Martinot4, Eric J Rubin3, Veronique Anne Dartois2*, Babak Javid1,3* 1Centre for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, Collaborative Innovation Centre for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing, China; 2Public Health Research Institute, New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, United States; 3Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, United States; 4Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States Abstract Most bacteria use an indirect pathway to generate aminoacylated glutamine and/or *For correspondence: asparagine tRNAs. Clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis with increased rates of error in
[email protected] gene translation (mistranslation) involving the indirect tRNA-aminoacylation pathway have (VAD); increased tolerance to the first-line antibiotic rifampicin. Here, we identify that the aminoglycoside
[email protected] (BJ) kasugamycin can specifically decrease mistranslation due to the indirect tRNA pathway. †These authors contributed Kasugamycin but not the aminoglycoside streptomycin, can limit emergence of rifampicin equally to this work resistance in vitro and increases mycobacterial susceptibility to rifampicin both in vitro and in a Competing interests: The murine model of infection. Moreover, despite parenteral administration of kasugamycin being authors declare that no unable to achieve the in vitro minimum inhibitory concentration, kasugamycin alone was able to competing interests exist.