Local and global consequences of flow on bacterial quorum sensing.

ABSTRACT: Bacteria use a chemical communication process called quorum sensing (QS) to control collective behaviours such as pathogenesis and biofilm formation(1,2). QS relies on the production, release and group-wide detection of signal molecules called autoinducers. To date, studies of bacterial pathogenesis in well-mixed cultures have revealed virulence factors and the regulatory circuits controlling them, including the overarching role of QS(3). Although flow is ubiquitous to nearly all living systems(4), much less explored is how QS influences pathogenic traits in scenarios that mimic host environments, for example, under fluid flow and in complex geometries. Previous studies(5-7) have shown that sufficiently strong flow represses QS. Nonetheless, it is not known how QS functions under constant

SUBMITTER: Kim MK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5010089 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature