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Microbiome

Taking advantage of quorum sensing

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 13, page 252 (2015)Cite this article

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The mouse gut microbiota comprises multiple bacterial species that predominately belong to the Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes phyla. Treatment with streptomycin causes a severe reduction in the overall bacterial diversity in the mouse gut; in particular, Firmicutes are almost completely depleted, whereas the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes is enriched.

As the communication between different bacterial species can influence the composition of the gut microbiota, Thompson, Oliveira et al. investigated the potential of using quorum sensing signals to modulate the bacterial composition of the mouse gut following antibiotic treatment. The authors generated an Escherichia coli strain that overproduces AI-2 — which is an interspecies quorum sensing signal — by deleting lsrK, which encodes a signal kinase that regulates AI-2 retention and degradation; the absence of LsrK led to the accumulation of extracellular AI-2. Notably, this E. coli mutant was able to stably colonize the gut of antibiotic-treated mice, which resulted in an alteration of the overall composition of bacterial species in the gut and a substantial increase in the abundance of Firmicutes, which had been severely reduced due to the antibiotic treatment.

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References

  1. Thompson, J. A., Oliveira, R. A. et al. Manipulation of the quorum sensing signal AI-2 affects the antibiotic-treated gut microbiota. Cell Rep. 10, 1861–1871 (2015)

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  1. Cláudio Nunes-Alves
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Nunes-Alves, C. Taking advantage of quorum sensing. Nat Rev Microbiol 13, 252 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3477

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