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Microbial ecology

Inter-kingdom interactions

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 12, page 725 (2014)Cite this article

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Chemotaxis of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans occurs in response to chemical cues secreted by bacteria, which are also its sole food source; however, little is known about how these cues are sensed. Werner et al. now show that the Vibrio cholerae autoinducer CAI-1, which is the dominant signal controlling quorum sensing in this bacterial species, functions as a chemoattractant for C. elegans.The authors identify the position of the CAI-1 ketone moiety as a key structural motif that is required to induce robust chemotaxis and they also show that C. elegans detects CAI-1 via the amphid sensory neuron AWCON. These findings demonstrate that C. elegans and V. cholerae have evolved to detect and respond to the same chemical cue and define a mechanism by which a bacterial quorum-sensing signal mediates cross-kingdom interactions.

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References

  1. Werner, K. M. et al. Caenorhabditis elegans recognizes a bacterial quorum-sensing signal molecule through the AWCON neuron. J. Biol. Chem. 289, 26566–26573 (2014)

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  1. Christina Tobin Kåhrström
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Kåhrström, C. Inter-kingdom interactions. Nat Rev Microbiol 12, 725 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3372

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