Abstract
BackgroundMembers of swarming bacterial consortia compete for nutrients but also use a co-operation mechanism called quorum sensing (QS) that relies on chemical signals as well as other secreted products (“public goods”) necessary for swarming. Deleting various genes of this machinery leads to cheater mutants impaired in various aspects of swarming cooperation.Methodology/Principal FindingsPairwise consortia made of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, its QS mutants as well as B. cepacia cells show that a interspecies consortium can “combine the skills” of its participants so that the strains can cross together barriers that they could not cross alone. In contrast, deleterious mutants are excluded from consortia either by competition or by local population collapse. According to modeling, both scenarios are the consequence of the QS signalling mechanism itself.Conclusion/SignificanceThe results indirectly explain why it is an advantage for bacteria to maintain QS systems that can cross-talk among different species, and conversely, why certain QS mutants which can be abundant in isolated niches, cannot spread and hence remain localized.
Highlights
It is believed that many species of bacteria coordinate their group behavior through monitoring their population density via the production and detection of small signaling compounds in a process called quorum sensing (QS) [1,2,3,4]
The QS mutants could all be complemented for their swarming deficieny; the acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) synthase mutants were chemically complemented by providing the signal molecules in the media whereas the lasR and rhlR mutants were complemented with the cosmids pIB101 and pIB103 [26] respectively
While mutants deficient in the synthase genes are information cheaters, mutants deficient in the R genes are public goods cheaters that do not contribute with factors necessary for swarming and growth
Summary
It is believed that many species of bacteria coordinate their group behavior through monitoring their population density via the production and detection of small signaling compounds in a process called quorum sensing (QS) [1,2,3,4]. The concentration of the secreted signals can dramatically increase resulting in a coordinated and synchronized community behavior that includes increased motility as well as the production of various ‘‘public goods’’ such as enzymes, surfactants, siderophores, etc (4,5). An extensive amount of work has been done in the last fifteen years highlighting that many important community phenotypes are regulated by quorum sensing One such phenotype is the swarming movement which is a mechanism that bacterial communities use to colonize surfaces, to infect host organisms and to invade new habitats for reviews see [5,6]. Members of swarming bacterial consortia compete for nutrients and use a co-operation mechanism called quorum sensing (QS) that relies on chemical signals as well as other secreted products (‘‘public goods’’) necessary for swarming. Deleting various genes of this machinery leads to cheater mutants impaired in various aspects of swarming cooperation
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