Implications of Rewiring Bacterial Quorum Sensing
- 15 January 2008
- journal article
- Published by American Society for Microbiology in Applied and Environmental Microbiology
- Vol. 74 (2) , 437-445
- https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.01688-07
Abstract
Bacteria employ quorum sensing, a form of cell-cell communication, to sense changes in population density and regulate gene expression accordingly. This work investigated the rewiring of one quorum-sensing module, the lux circuit from the marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri . Steady-state experiments demonstrate that rewiring the network architecture of this module can yield graded, threshold, and bistable gene expression as predicted by a mathematical model. The experiments also show that the native lux operon is most consistent with a threshold, as opposed to a bistable, response. Each of the rewired networks yielded functional population sensors at biologically relevant conditions, suggesting that this operon is particularly robust. These findings (i) permit prediction of the behaviors of quorum-sensing operons in bacterial pathogens and (ii) facilitate forward engineering of synthetic gene circuits.Keywords
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