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Ecological feedback in quorum-sensing microbial populations can induce heterogeneous production of autoinducers

Autoinducers are small signaling molecules that mediate intercellular communication in microbial populations and trigger coordinated gene expression via ‘quorum sensing’. Elucidating the mechanisms that control autoinducer production is, thus, pertinent to understanding collective microbial behavior...

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Autores principales: Bauer, Matthias, Knebel, Johannes, Lechner, Matthias, Pickl, Peter, Frey, Erwin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5526673/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28741470
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25773
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author Bauer, Matthias
Knebel, Johannes
Lechner, Matthias
Pickl, Peter
Frey, Erwin
author_facet Bauer, Matthias
Knebel, Johannes
Lechner, Matthias
Pickl, Peter
Frey, Erwin
author_sort Bauer, Matthias
collection PubMed
description Autoinducers are small signaling molecules that mediate intercellular communication in microbial populations and trigger coordinated gene expression via ‘quorum sensing’. Elucidating the mechanisms that control autoinducer production is, thus, pertinent to understanding collective microbial behavior, such as virulence and bioluminescence. Recent experiments have shown a heterogeneous promoter activity of autoinducer synthase genes, suggesting that some of the isogenic cells in a population might produce autoinducers, whereas others might not. However, the mechanism underlying this phenotypic heterogeneity in quorum-sensing microbial populations has remained elusive. In our theoretical model, cells synthesize and secrete autoinducers into the environment, up-regulate their production in this self-shaped environment, and non-producers replicate faster than producers. We show that the coupling between ecological and population dynamics through quorum sensing can induce phenotypic heterogeneity in microbial populations, suggesting an alternative mechanism to stochastic gene expression in bistable gene regulatory circuits. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25773.001
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spelling pubmed-55266732017-07-27 Ecological feedback in quorum-sensing microbial populations can induce heterogeneous production of autoinducers Bauer, Matthias Knebel, Johannes Lechner, Matthias Pickl, Peter Frey, Erwin eLife Computational and Systems Biology Autoinducers are small signaling molecules that mediate intercellular communication in microbial populations and trigger coordinated gene expression via ‘quorum sensing’. Elucidating the mechanisms that control autoinducer production is, thus, pertinent to understanding collective microbial behavior, such as virulence and bioluminescence. Recent experiments have shown a heterogeneous promoter activity of autoinducer synthase genes, suggesting that some of the isogenic cells in a population might produce autoinducers, whereas others might not. However, the mechanism underlying this phenotypic heterogeneity in quorum-sensing microbial populations has remained elusive. In our theoretical model, cells synthesize and secrete autoinducers into the environment, up-regulate their production in this self-shaped environment, and non-producers replicate faster than producers. We show that the coupling between ecological and population dynamics through quorum sensing can induce phenotypic heterogeneity in microbial populations, suggesting an alternative mechanism to stochastic gene expression in bistable gene regulatory circuits. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25773.001 eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2017-07-25 /pmc/articles/PMC5526673/ /pubmed/28741470 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25773 Text en © 2017, Bauer et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Computational and Systems Biology
Bauer, Matthias
Knebel, Johannes
Lechner, Matthias
Pickl, Peter
Frey, Erwin
Ecological feedback in quorum-sensing microbial populations can induce heterogeneous production of autoinducers
title Ecological feedback in quorum-sensing microbial populations can induce heterogeneous production of autoinducers
title_full Ecological feedback in quorum-sensing microbial populations can induce heterogeneous production of autoinducers
title_fullStr Ecological feedback in quorum-sensing microbial populations can induce heterogeneous production of autoinducers
title_full_unstemmed Ecological feedback in quorum-sensing microbial populations can induce heterogeneous production of autoinducers
title_short Ecological feedback in quorum-sensing microbial populations can induce heterogeneous production of autoinducers
title_sort ecological feedback in quorum-sensing microbial populations can induce heterogeneous production of autoinducers
topic Computational and Systems Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5526673/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28741470
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25773
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