<i>Vibrio cholerae</i> integrates interspecies quorum-sensing signals to regulate virulence.

ABSTRACT: The human gut harbors enormous microbial diversity, which influences the gut's chemical environment. As the production of virulence factors affects bacterial fitness, Vibrio cholerae has adapted to sense the gut chemical environment to selectively activate virulence factors at permissible intestinal niches. Here, we show that diffusible signal factors (DSFs) canonically used by gut proteobacteria for quorum-sensing communication can repress expression of essential ToxT-dependent virulence factors cholera toxin (ctxAB) and the toxin co-regulated pilus (tcpA-F). Unlike canonical quorum sensing, where DSFs are sensed by two-component systems or cyclic di-GMP-regulated proteins, DSFs target the central AraC-type transcriptional regulator ToxT. The most potent of these mole

SUBMITTER: Bosire EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12421807 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature