Bacterial communication: Tiny teamwork (original) (raw)

Nature volume 424, page 134 (2003) Cite this article

The first hints that bacteria might produce species-specific signals for cell-to-cell communication emerged more than 30 years ago from pioneering work in the laboratories of J. W. Hastings and Alex Tomasz. When critical environmental concentrations of then unidentified signalling molecules were reached, they triggered the expression of specific genes, controlling light production in a marine luminescent bacterium, and genetic competence in the pneumococcus. After a grudging acceptance of these examples, communication was viewed as a curiosity, unique to a few special bacteria. But we now know that many bacteria use cell-to-cell communication to control gene expression, a process that has become known as quorum sensing. At a high population density, there is enough signal to instruct all of the individuals to do something they won't do at lower population densities — a form of peer pressure.

Quorum sensing in Pseudomonas aeruginosa has attracted considerable attention because this pathogen causes many hard-to-treat infections, including chronic biofilm infections in the lungs of people with cystic fibrosis. In this bacterium, quorum sensing is a key virulence determinant — mutants that cannot communicate are seriously impaired in their ability to cause infections in lab models. P. aeruginosa uses quorum sensing to control hundreds of genes, many of which code for the production of secreted virulence factors that are toxic in one way or another to the host.

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  1. Carver College of Medicine and in the Department of Microbiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 52242, Iowa, USA
    E. Peter Greenberg

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  1. E. Peter Greenberg

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Greenberg, E. Bacterial communication: Tiny teamwork.Nature 424, 134 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/424134a

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