Artificial Control of the Bacterial Cell-to-Cell Communication with Autoinducer Recognition Gel

Abstract

Bacterial cell-to-cell communication system quorum sensing (QS) could be effectively controlled with polymer gel sheets which possess affinity to QS signals. Cyclic oligosaccharide cyclodextrin (CD) was successfully immobilized onto 2-hydroxypropyl cellulose gel sheets to trap the QS signals produced in one of the opportunistic pathogen Serratia marcescens. In gram-negative bacteria including S. marcescens, N-acylhomoserine lactones (AHL) with different length of acyl-chains were produced as the QS signal autoinducer. The inclusion complex formation between AHL and CD is responsible for the artificial decrease of the AHL concentration inside and outside of cells. Because the QS system is the AHL-concentration dependent mechanism that activates the specific gene transcription, the AHL trapping method was simple and greatly effective to intercept the QS system. By using the 2-hydroxypropyl-β-CD immobilized gel sheets, the prodigiosin of which production was regulated by the AHL-mediated QS system could be reduced to approximately 20%.