Within a short span of time since humans evolved, he turned into an effective communicator, but when compared to bacteria, he is not. We humans, can speak to others and have certain courage when some peoples are around us. Like us, bacteria cannot speak but they can communicate by releasing chemical substances as a signal with their species. It delivers messages like, “We are here”, to other bacteria present in a certain closed environment. They communicate with each other to produce virulence, biofilm, and bioluminescence.
Quorum sensing is the ability to detect and respond to cell population density by gene regulation. The molecules released by bacteria which stimulate and signal bacterial population are called Auto-inducers. This method of using auto-inducers allows bacteria to communicate among the same species and others. Bacteria being a unicellular organism by nature, its communication is a cell-cell type of communication. It secretes some chemical compounds (either intracellular or extracellular) and those compounds are exposed to the environment where their population can be signaled. Those compounds get attached to the receptors of bacteria and get transcribed to produce their compound of interest. The concentration of the autoinducers grows with respect to the size of the bacterial population. When it reaches the saturation point, the compounds diffuse back to regulate the transcription of the genes responsible for the formation and release of virulence factors, antibiotic production, and biofilm formation.
There are two types of quorum sensing: Anti quorum sensing and Pro quorum Sensing. In the last decade, a major medical dispute occurred on the resistance of bacteria and fungi to the antibiotics.
The medical field needed an alternative approach on the antibiotics. The anti quorum research lead a great way against the microbes by inhibiting or shut down the supply of auto inducers. In anti-quorum sensing, the autoinducers synthesis is inhibited, the receptor shows antagonism against autoinducers, degrades the AIs(Auto inducers) using the catalytic antibodies (abzymes) / enzymes, or antibodies that cover the channel outside of the receptor block the binding of AIs. This Quorum sensing activity disruption leads to the attenuation of microbial virulence. This kind of degradation and demolition of AIs is called Quorum Quenching(QQ) . These QQ drugs were non toxic and with broad spectrum, were synthesized from plants, antibodies and other microbial extracts. These drugs inhibit the quorum sensing and thereby the formation of virulence, biofilm formation were stopped.
Inversely, Pro quorum Sensing is beneficial to the mankind, as the quorum sensing signal can be utilized to increase industrial production of natural products such as antibiotics and other secondary metabolites.
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