Work

Implications of Rewiring Bacterial Quorum Sensing

Year: 2007

Type: article

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.

Source: Applied and Environmental Microbiology

DOI: 10.1128/aem.01688-07

Authors: Eric L. Haseltine, Frances H. Arnold

Institution: California Institute of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Bacterial biofilms and quorum sensing

Subfield: Molecular Biology

Field: Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, California Institute of Technology, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute

Awards: G4854748356, G6613594313, Optimizing Biological Circuits: Methods and Application, G9000094085