Preexisting Heterogeneity of Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase Expression Drives Differential Growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Macrophages

Abstract

In this report, we demonstrate that fluctuations in the expression of antimicrobial genes can define how single host cells control bacterial infections. We show that preexisting cell-to-cell variation in the expression of a single gene, that for inducible nitric oxide synthase, is sufficient to explain why some macrophages kill intracellular M. tuberculosis while others fail to control bacterial replication, possibly leading to disease progression.