Transcriptional profiling of Mycobacterium tuberculosis replicating in the human type II alveolar epithelial cell line, A549

Alveolar epithelial cells outnumber alveolar macrophages by ~500 fold and increasing evidence suggests that Mycobacterium tuberculosis may replicate dramatically in these cells during the initial weeks of infecting the lung (Wolf et al., 2008 [1]; Ryndak et al., 2015 [2]). Here, we report in experimental detail the transcriptional profiling of M. tuberculosis replicating at 72 h post-infection in the human type II alveolar epithelial cell line, A549, as compared to M. tuberculosis growing logarithmically in laboratory broth culture (Ryndak et al., 2015 [2]). All resulting transcriptional profiling data was deposited to the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database under the accession number GSE58466.