Abstract
One obvious requirement for concerted action by a bacterial population is for an individual to be aware of and respond to the other individuals of the same species in order to form a response in unison. The term “quorum sensing” (QS) was coined to describe bacterial communication that is able to stimulate expression of a series of genes when the concentration of the signaling molecules has reached a threshold level. Here we report the isolation from aquatic environment of a bacterium that was later identified as Enterobacter sp.. Chromobacterium violaceum CV026 and Escherichia coli [pSB401] were used for preliminary screening of N-acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) production. The Enterobacter sp. isolated was shown to produce two types of AHLs as confirmed by analysis using high resolution tandem mass spectrometry. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first documentation of an Enterobacter sp. that produced both 3-oxo-C6-HSL and 3-oxo-C8-HSL as QS signaling molecules.
Highlights
Language plays a pivotal role in human communication while in bacterial cell-cell communication, it typically involves the production of small diffusible signaling molecules, a phenomenon known as quorum sensing (QS) [1]
Gram-negative bacteria mostly produce signaling molecules belonging to the autoinducer-1 type, namely N-acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs) and Gram-positive bacteria use oligopeptide autoinducers [3,4]
We investigated the presence of QS bacteria in a Malaysian tropical rainforest waterfall and we report the isolation of a QS Enterobacter sp
Summary
Language plays a pivotal role in human communication while in bacterial cell-cell communication, it typically involves the production of small diffusible signaling molecules, a phenomenon known as quorum sensing (QS) [1]. QS is defined as the control of gene expression involving signaling molecules used by both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria to regulate various physiological functions including secondary metabolite production, symbiosis and motility in response to cell density [2,3]. The degree of saturation, fatty acid side chains that vary in chain length (ranging from 4–18 carbons) and the presence of hydroxyl-, oxo- or no substituents at the C3 position influence the characteristics of the AHL molecules [7] They may have different lengths and degrees of saturation of the acyl side chain, the lactone ring structure is highly conserved [3,8]. The presence of QS bacteria in the aquatic environment has attracted significant interest because QS regulates diverse bacterial functions including the expression of virulence factors [10,15]. We investigated the presence of QS bacteria in a Malaysian tropical rainforest waterfall and we report the isolation of a QS Enterobacter sp
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