Mycobacterium tuberculosis
(
Mtb
) is known to persist in extremely hostile environments within host macrophages. The ability to withstand such proteotoxic stress comes from its highly conserved molecular chaperone machinery. ClpB, a unique member of the
AAA
+ family of chaperones, is responsible for resolving aggregates in
Mtb
and many other bacterial pathogens.
Mtb
produces two isoforms of ClpB, a full length and an N‐terminally truncated form (ClpB∆N), with the latter arising from an internal translation initiation site. It is not clear why this internal start site is conserved and what role the N‐terminal domain (
NTD
) of
Mtb
ClpB plays in its function. In the current study, we functionally characterized and compared the two isoforms of
Mtb
ClpB. We found the
NTD
to be dispensable for oligomerization,
ATP
ase activity and prevention of aggregation activity of ClpB. Both ClpB and ClpB∆N were found to be capable of resolubilizing protein aggregates. However, the efficiency of ClpB∆N at resolubilizing higher order aggregates was significantly lower than that of ClpB. Further, ClpB∆N exhibited reduced affinity for substrates as compared to ClpB. We also demonstrated that the surface of the
NTD
of
Mtb
ClpB has a hydrophobic groove that contains four hydrophobic residues: L97, L101, F140 and V141. These residues act as initial contacts for the substrate and are crucial for stable interaction between ClpB and highly aggregated substrates.