Association between intrinsic disorder and serine/threonine phosphorylation in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Serine/threonine phosphorylation is an important mechanism to regulate protein function. In eukaryotes phosphorylation occurs predominantly in intrinsically disordered regions of proteins. While serine/threonine phosphorylation and protein disorder are much less prevalent in prokaryotes, M. tuberculosis has both high serine/threonine phosphorylation and disorder. Here I show that, similar to eukaryotes, serine/threonine phosphorylation sites in M. tuberculosis are highly enriched in intrinsically disordered regions, indicating similarity in substrate recognition mechanism of eukaryotic and M. tuberculosis kinases. Serine/threonine phosphorylation has been linked to the pathogenicity and survival of M. tuberculosis, thus better understanding of how its kinases recognize their substrates could have important implications in understanding and controlling the biology of this deadly pathogen.