Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 109, Issue 41, Pages E2823-E2831Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1214128109
Keywords
bacterial communication; systems biology; transcription control
Categories
Funding
- US Public Health Service (USPHS) [GM-59026, GM-56665]
- Microbiology and Genomics Cores of USPHS Grant [P30DK089507]
- Korea Research Foundation Grant (Republic of Korea) [KRF-2009-013-F00014]
- National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Grant [U54 AI057141]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Quorum sensing allows bacteria to sense and respond to changes in population density. Acyl-homoserine lactones serve as quorum-sensing signals for many Proteobacteria, and acyl-homoserine lactone signaling is known to control cooperative activities. Quorum-controlled activities vary from one species to another. Quorum-sensing controls a constellation of genes in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which thrives in a number of habitats ranging from soil and water to animal hosts. We hypothesized that there would be significant variation in quorum-sensing regulons among strains of P. aeruginosa isolated from different habitats and that differences in the quorum-sensing regulons might reveal insights about the ecology of P. aeruginosa. As a test of our hypothesis we used RNA-seq to identify quorum-controlled genes in seven P. aeruginosa isolates of diverse origins. Although our approach certainly overlooks some quorum-sensing-regulated genes we found a shared set of genes, i.e., a core quorum-controlled gene set, and we identified distinct, strain-variable sets of quorum-controlled genes, i.e., accessory genes. Some quorum-controlled genes in some strains were not present in the genomes of other strains. We detected a correlation between traits encoded by some genes in the strain-variable subsets of the quorum regulons and the ecology of the isolates. These findings indicate a role for quorum sensing in extension of the range of habitats in which a species can thrive. This study also provides a framework for understanding the molecular mechanisms by which quorum-sensing systems operate, the evolutionary pressures by which they are maintained, and their importance in disparate ecological contexts.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available