Quorum sensing is a process wherein cells produce and sense a tiny chemical signal shared across the population. It allows bacteria and other single-celled organisms to coordinate actions and operate as a group. It's a strength-in-numbers strategy that enables bacteria to work together to accomplish tasks they couldn't do alone. The concept includes collecting resources and plants, infected animals, and competing with other microorganisms.
A research team has discovered proteins that prevent a bacterial cell from being misled by its communications. The study permits the bacteria to wait for collective communication from its group. Thus, helping researchers discover it. This type of signaling is known as quorum sensing, which is essential to bacterial pathogens. The findings are critical for the Infection Control Market as it opens the way to new medications that can disrupt and fight infection.
The team investigated the pathogen's quorum sensing. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a gram-negative bacteria with a wide range of social characteristics. It is a common source of lung and wound infections in hospital patients and persons with weaker immune systems. According to the researchers, P. aeruginosa is a model organism that can help in quorum sensing studies. This is because it has a well-understood communication circuit.
Bacterial infection frequently contains toxins that only injure the host when produced in large quantities by all bacterial cells simultaneously. Single-celled organisms must occasionally collaborate with other cells. A quorum is formed when a group of bacteria releases a signal that reaches a high enough concentration in their environment. After that, certain genes are activated simultaneously, and specific group behaviors are triggered.
Antiactivators, a group of proteins, are critical for short-circuit avoidance, according to research. The proteins act as a "tuner" for quorum sensing, making cells less sensitive to the quorum signal.
The group created bacterial strains lacking two different types of antiactivator proteins. They then studied quorum sensing in individual cells.
The team discovered that without antiactivators, the minority of cells in a P. aeruginosa population engaged in self-talk. Signal short-circuiting activates quorum-sensing-dependent behaviors in these cells at all times, regardless of cell density or communication with other cells.
The research demonstrates how bacteria disable quorum sensing in order to achieve true group communication.