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A modular view of the diversity of cell-density-encoding schemes in bacterial
quorum-sensing systems
#MMPMID24988360
Drees B
; Reiger M
; Jung K
; Bischofs IB
Biophys J
2014[Jul]; 107
(1
): 266-77
PMID24988360
show ga
Certain environmental parameters are accessible to cells only indirectly and
require an encoding step for cells to retrieve the relevant information. A
prominent example is the phenomenon of quorum sensing by microorganisms, where
information about cell density is encoded by means of secreted signaling
molecules. The mapping of cell density to signal molecule concentration and the
corresponding network modules involved have been at least partially characterized
in many bacteria, and vary markedly between different systems. In this study, we
investigate theoretically how differences in signal transport, signal
modification, and site of signal detection shape the encoding function and affect
the sensitivity and the noise characteristics of the cell-density-encoding
process. We find that different modules are capable of implementing both fairly
basic as well as more complex encoding schemes, whose qualitative characteristics
vary with cell density and are linked to network architecture, providing the
basis for a hierarchical classification scheme. We exploit the tight relationship
between encoding behavior and network architecture to constrain the network
topology of partially characterized natural systems, and verify one such
prediction by showing experimentally that Vibrio harveyi is capable of importing
Autoinducer 2. The framework developed in this research can serve not only to
guide reverse engineering of natural systems but also to stimulate the design of
synthetic systems and generally facilitate a better understanding of the
complexities arising in the quorum-sensing process because of variations in the
physical organization of the encoder network module.
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