Premium
“Clicking” on the Lights To Reveal Bacterial Social Networking
Author(s) -
Clevenger Kenneth D.,
Fast Walter
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
chembiochem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.05
H-Index - 126
eISSN - 1439-7633
pISSN - 1439-4227
DOI - 10.1002/cbic.201100767
Subject(s) - quorum sensing , biology , bacteria , autoinducer , population , homoserine , microbial ecology , computational biology , ecology , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , biofilm , medicine , environmental health
“No man is an island.”1 With apologies to John Donne, the same could be said for a bacterium. The discovery of bacterial quorum sensing and its relevance to microbial ecology and pathogenesis have fueled the increasing scrutiny of the molecular mechanisms responsible for the apparent group behavior of microbes.2 A number of chemically diverse small molecules act as diffusible signaling molecules that regulate gene expression in a population‐dependent manner. Some of these signals, such as the N ‐acyl‐ L ‐homoserine lactones, are produced and sensed by others in the same or closely related species, and other chemical classes of signals are used more broadly for interspecies and even interkingdom communication.3 As a field, the study of these microbial social networks has been termed “sociomicrobiology.”4