真菌的群体感应现象及群体感应分子(QSMs)研究进展

为适应环境变化,微生物细胞间进行信息交流,导致其菌体形态、生物被膜的形成、毒素分泌等生理生化特征发生变化,这种细胞间交流的现象称为群体感应现象。最初在细菌中发现这种复杂的交流方式,后来,在真核生物(真菌)中也发现了这种现象,白色念珠菌是较早被报道具有群体感应系统的真菌之一。目前,已经在各种真菌中鉴定出了许多群体感应分子,其中,围绕白色念珠菌的群体感应现象及机制研究报道较多,发现了其主要的群体感应分子及其调控作用机制。本文中,笔者主要针对白色念珠菌群体感应分子的挖掘及其生理效应进行系统综述,此外,还对其他真菌群体感应现象及群体感应分子进行概述。最后,笔者预测不同真菌群体感应研究发展方向和潜在应用。     

生物聚集体中群体感应作用的研究进展

群体感应是微生物利用信号分子感知环境条件并进行特定基因表达调控.近年来,随着群体感应在微生物信息交流中的作用日益凸显,其在生物聚集体(生物膜和颗粒)形成过程中的作用受到广泛关注.本文综述了自体诱导信号分子AI的分类和相应的群体感应调控方式,以及群体感应信号分子对生物聚集体形成和结构稳定的调控,并对群体感应研究新领域进行了展望.     

废水处理中群体感应调控行为研究进展

群体感应是微生物在繁殖过程中分泌一些特定的信号分子,当信号分子浓度达到一定阈值后,可以调控某些基因表达,从而实现信息交流的现象.群体感应调控着生物膜形成、公共物质合成、基因水平转移等一系列社会性行为,广泛存在于各类微生物信息交流中.活性污泥、生物膜和颗粒污泥等生物聚集体广泛存在群体感应现象,了解和认识群体感应与微生物之间的调控行为,对于废水处理具有重要意义.本文综述了感应信号分子的分类、群体感应调控机制,群体感应在活性污泥、生物膜、好氧颗粒污泥和厌氧颗粒污泥等废水处理中的调控行为的研究进展,并对废水处理中群体感应的研究进行了展望,以期为深入理解废水处理中群体感应调控行为提供参考.     

微生物群体感应系统与食品防腐保鲜

微生物群体感应(QS)是其群体密度变化时,通过信号分子的产生与接收对种内或种间菌体生理代谢状况进行调节的一种现象,其本质是微生物种内或种间的信息交流。当前,受微生物侵染腐败影响,世界范围内的食品损失巨大,有大量证据表明群体感应现象参与食品腐败过程,因此掌握微生物群体感应现象的基本规律对食品防腐保鲜与减少食物浪费有重要意义。基于此,笔者简要梳理了微生物群体感应的基本概念与原理,列举了食品腐败中部分常见的群体感应现象和部分群体感应抑制剂的研究,并提出合理性建议,以期为群体感应在食品领域的研究提供理论依据与支持。     

群体感应在生物强化功能菌定殖及降解能力增强中的作用研究进展

由于难降解有机污染物和外界环境对水处理系统的冲击干扰,污水水质常出现不达标现象。引入外源含有相关功能基因并且具有基因水平转移能力的工程菌株进行生物强化处理是提高污水处理效能的有效措施。污水处理系统中存在能够分泌信号分子的菌体,菌间具有群体感应现象,当种群密度达到感应阈值时,菌体会通过释放信号分子来触发一些群体行为,从而激活相关基因的表达(如生物膜形成、生物发光、抗生素合成和毒力因子表达等)。早期的群体感应技术研究主要集中在信号传递学、微生物社会行为学和医学微生物领域,近年来,在水处理领域也开始有相继报道,研究表明群体感应在污水生物处理中发挥重要作用,并且影响生物强化菌株的定殖和污染物降解,因此群体感应行为调控是生物强化技术成效显著与否的关键因素。本文综述了群体感应及信号分子的作用机制、信号分子释放及存在的影响因素以及群体感应对菌株定殖、微生物群落结构和污染物去除的影响,并对从群体感应角度出发研究生物强化过程进行了展望,旨在为生物强化技术的有效实施及提升污水处理效能提供一种新思路,为深入理解生物强化过程中群体感应调控行为提供理论参考。     

刊首语

正自微生物被发现以来,人们一直认为其是以单细胞个体孤独地存在于环境中,直到1970年,Nealson等首次报道环境中费氏弧菌(Vibrio fisheri)的发光现象与菌体密度有关。1994年,Fuqua等首次提出群体感应(QS)这一概念。大量的研究结果证实,微生物通过群体感应机制进行"细胞对细胞的交流",很多重要的生     

群体感应系统介导细菌生物膜形成的研究进展

群体感应(QS)是微生物之间的通讯机制,通过信号分子调控基因表达,这种交流可使细菌表达不同的生理行为,包括病原微生物的毒性、对抗生素的形成、生物膜的形成与生长等。生物膜的形成对微生物的代谢、毒力因子的表达等密切相关。群体感应现象与生物膜的形成相互依赖,生物膜提供菌体聚集场所,避免群体感应信号分子的扩散,聚集菌体的群体感应现象为生物膜的形成提供基础。群体感应系统不仅可直接介导细菌生物膜的形成,还可调节胞内第二信使分子水平,间接调控生物膜的生成。本文中,笔者从直接和协同其他信号分子两方面对细菌生物膜形成机制研究进展进行综述,为在工业应用中降低细菌耐药性、指导食品生产安全、提高功能性生物膜产量等方面提供理论依据。     

微生物信号分子降解酶研究进展

微生物细胞之间存在的信息交流称为群体感应。群体感应在实现微生物的生物学功能方面具有重要作用,包括调节致病性、参与生物膜的形成等。微生物能够分泌特定的信号分子,通过对信号分子的检测及应答,调控目的基因的表达。抑制信号分子的积累,能够干扰群体感应系统,使微生物丧失生物学功能。研究较为全面的一类信号分子是酰基高丝氨酸内酯(acylhomoserine lactone,AHL),此类信号分子可以通过酶法降解。目前已鉴定出的AHL降解酶主要分为AHL内酯酶和AHL酰化酶两类。综述了信号分子降解酶的来源、筛选方法、纯化技术、酶学性质、作用机制及在病害防治方面的应用。对信号分子降解酶的研究有助于完善群体感应系统的调控机制,并为微生物疾病的防治提供新策略。     

群体感应与微生物耐药性

微生物耐药性已成为全球关注的严重问题,其演化机制和调控机理也已成为研究热点。近年来的研究发现,一些微生物耐药性机制受到群体感应系统的调控。群体感应是一种在微生物界广泛存在并与菌体密度关联的细胞-细胞间的通讯系统。高密度的菌落群体能够产生足够数量的小分子信号,激活下游包括致病毒力和耐药性机制在内的多种细胞进程,耐受抗生素并且危害寄主。本文结合国内外最新的研究进展,对微生物群体感应系统的研究现状进行了概括性介绍,重点阐述了群体感应系统对微生物耐药性机制的调控作用,如微生物生物被膜形成和药物外排泵调控等方面的作用,并探讨了利用群体淬灭控制微生物耐药性的新策略。     

细菌群体感应淬灭酶及其病害防治研究进展

微生物细胞间通过信号分子进行信息交流的现象即群体感应(Quorum sensing,QS),QS广泛存在于微生物群体中,且可以调控特定基因尤其是很多致病基因的表达。群体感应淬灭(Quorum quenching,QQ)是基于群体感应现象提出的新型病害防治策略,即通过抑制信号分子的合成、监测或对信号分子进行酶降解、修饰的途径来干扰群体感应以达到防治病害的目的。利用群体感应淬灭酶(Quorum quenching enzymes)降解微生物信号分子,是目前毒性最小、最为有效的群体感应淬灭途径。迄今为止,多种细菌信号分子的群体感应淬灭酶都已有报道,其中,酰基高丝氨酸内酯(N-acyl homoserine lactones,AHLs)和顺-11-甲基-2-癸烯酸(cis-11-Methyl-2-dodecenoic acid)群体感应淬灭酶研究最为深入。综述并分析了群体感应淬灭酶及其病害防治的研究现状、存在的问题和未来研究方向,为今后发展新型绿色安全病害防控措施提供关键理论和技术支撑。     

Quantifying the Integration of Quorum-Sensing Signals with Single-Cell Resolution

Cell-to-cell communication in bacteria is a process known as quorum sensing that relies on the production, detection, and response to the extracellular accumulation of signaling molecules called autoinducers. Often, bacteria use multiple autoinducers to obtain information about the vicinal cell density. However, how cells integrate and interpret the information contained within multiple autoinducers remains a mystery. Using single-cell fluorescence microscopy, we quantified the signaling responses to and analyzed the integration of multiple autoinducers by the model quorum-sensing bacterium Vibrio harveyi. Our results revealed that signals from two distinct autoinducers, AI-1 and AI-2, are combined strictly additively in a shared phosphorelay pathway, with each autoinducer contributing nearly equally to the total response. We found a coherent response across the population with little cell-to-cell variation, indicating that the entire population of cells can reliably distinguish several distinct conditions of external autoinducer concentration. We speculate that the use of multiple autoinducers allows a growing population of cells to synchronize gene expression during a series of distinct developmental stages.     

Look who's talking: communication and quorum sensing in the bacterial world

For many years bacteria were considered primarily as autonomous unicellular organisms with little capacity for collective behaviour. However, we now appreciate that bacterial cells are in fact, highly communicative. The generic term 'quorum sensing' has been adopted to describe the bacterial cell-to-cell communication mechanisms which co-ordinate gene expression usually, but not always, when the population has reached a high cell density. Quorum sensing depends on the synthesis of small molecules (often referred to as pheromones or autoinducers) that diffuse in and out of bacterial cells. As the bacterial population density increases, so does the synthesis of quorum sensing signal molecules, and consequently, their concentration in the external environment rises. Once a critical threshold concentration has been reached, a target sensor kinase or response regulator is activated (or repressed) so facilitating the expression of quorum sensing-dependent genes. Quorum sensing enables a bacterial population to mount a co-operative response that improves access to nutrients or specific environmental niches, promotes collective defence against other competitor prokaryotes or eukaryotic defence mechanisms and facilitates survival through differentiation into morphological forms better able to combat environmental threats. Quorum sensing also crosses the prokaryotic-eukaryotic boundary since quorum sensing-dependent signalling can be exploited or inactivated by both plants and mammals.     

厌氧氨氧化菌群体感应系统研究

厌氧氨氧化(Anammox)是以铵为电子供体将亚硝酸盐转化为氮气的生物过程。厌氧氨氧化菌(AAOB)生理代谢和细胞结构均十分特殊,且在氮素循环中起着十分重要的作用。厌氧氨氧化已成为环境学、微生物学、海洋学等领域的研究热点。但是,至今人们未能对厌氧氨氧化菌进行纯培养,这严重限制了对厌氧氨氧化菌的深入研究。群体感应是一种普遍存在于微生物细胞之间的通讯机制,它具有根据菌群密度和周围环境变化调节基因表达,以控制细菌群体行为的功能。厌氧氨氧化菌活性的细胞密度效应和生物团聚行为与细菌中普遍存在的群体感应现象相符。探讨了厌氧氨氧化菌群体感应系统存在的可能性、工作机制及其生态学意义,以期为厌氧氨氧化菌的分离培养、团聚体培育等提供理论指导。     

Conversation game: talking bacteria

The story of autonomous unicellular organisms, bacteria with unimaginable computational and evolutionary capabilities along with collective behavior has been running since the first six decades of the twentieth Century. However, do not consider them to be small and simple, because they possess the generic term quorum sensing adopted to describe the cell communication process which co-ordinate gene expression, when the population has reached a high cell density. Bacteria release diffusible signal molecules known as autoinducers or quorum sensing molecules. In recent research, the direction for activating or deactivating nature of a wave of gene expression is predicted experimentally which control bacterial populations subject to a diffusing autoinducer signal. On the other hand, it has been observed that the accumulation of the quorum sensing molecules leads to a negative diffusion coefficient in the solution of governing differential equation.     

细菌的群体感应及与病原菌致病性的关系

微生物的群体感应(quorum sensing,QS)也称为自诱导,是微生物间通过小分子分泌物(自诱导物)在细胞与细胞之间扩散以感知群体密度,并通过自诱导物的浓度及其与转录因子的相互作用调控整个群体细胞中一系列目标基因表达的一种自我感知系统.不同的细菌类型,其QS系统也有一定的差异.根据信号分子的不同,一般可以将细菌的QS系统分为3类,即以AHL为信号分子的革兰氏阴性细菌、以寡肽类物质为信号分子的革兰氏阳性细菌和以哈氏弧菌为代表的兼具上述两种类型QS系统特征的第三类QS系统.综述革兰氏阴性细菌、革兰氏阳性细菌和哈氏弧菌的3种不同QS系统及其在病原菌致病性方面的研究进展.     

根瘤菌与群体感应

细菌在高细胞密度下可以产生群体感应信号分子,调控细菌相关基因的表达,这种信号分子被称为自体诱导物。酰基高丝氨酸内酯类化合物(acyl-HSLs)是在根瘤菌中广泛存在的一类自体诱导物,该群体感应系统与根瘤菌和植物的共生作用密切相关。本文概述了AHLs介导的群体感应系统的组成及调控机制和不同根瘤菌中群体感应调节对根瘤菌生理行为及共生固氮的影响。     

Optimal Census by Quorum Sensing

Quorum sensing is the regulation of gene expression in response to changes in cell density. To measure their cell density, bacterial populations produce and detect diffusible molecules called autoinducers. Individual bacteria internally represent the external concentration of autoinducers via the level of monitor proteins. In turn, these monitor proteins typically regulate both their own production and the production of autoinducers, thereby establishing internal and external feedbacks. Here, we ask whether feedbacks can increase the information available to cells about their local density. We quantify available information as the mutual information between the abundance of a monitor protein and the local cell density for biologically relevant models of quorum sensing. Using variational methods, we demonstrate that feedbacks can increase information transmission, allowing bacteria to resolve up to two additional ranges of cell density when compared with bistable quorum-sensing systems. Our analysis is relevant to multi-agent systems that track an external driver implicitly via an endogenously generated signal.     

Quorum sensing: How bacteria can coordinate activity and synchronize their response to external signals?

Quorum sensing is used by a large variety of bacteria to regulate gene expression in a cell-density-dependent manner. Bacteria can synchronize population behavior using small molecules called autoinducers that are produced by cognate synthases and recognized by specific receptors. Quorum sensing plays critical roles in regulating diverse cellular functions in bacteria, including bioluminescence, virulence gene expression, biofilm formation, and antibiotic resistance. The best-studied autoinducers are acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) molecules, which are the primary quorum sensing signals used by Gram-negative bacteria. In this review we focus on the AHL-dependent quorum sensing system and highlight recent progress on structural and mechanistic studies of AHL synthases and the corresponding receptors. Crystal structures of LuxI-type AHL synthases provide insights into acyl-substrate specificity, but the current knowledge is still greatly limited. Structural studies of AHL receptors have facilitated a more thorough understanding of signal perception and established the molecular framework for the development of quorum sensing inhibitors.     

QUORUM SENSING AND GROUP SELECTION

Bacteria respond to cell density by expressing genes whose products are beneficial to the population as a whole. This response is brought about through the release into the medium of signaling molecules of the class N-acyl homoserine lactones, the concentration of which determines the level of gene expression. This form of communication between cells has been termed “quorum sensing,” and has been found to operate in the control of many functions in a variety of gram-negative bacteria. As with all signaling between individuals, if fitness costs are associated with the release of and response to the signal, the inclusive fitness of alleles responsible for the phenomenon depends upon genetic relatedness between signaler and responder. The situation is considered in explicit models for bacterial population genetics, in which the critical parameter determining the success of quorum sensing is the mean number of cells founding a population sharing a patch of resource. It is found that extensive polymorphism for the presence or absence of quorum sensing is expected for a wide range of parameter space. If local communities of bacteria contain diverse species, community stability may be the consequence of these interactions rather than polymorphism.     

The LuxS family of bacterial autoinducers: biosynthesis of a novel quorum-sensing signal molecule

Many bacteria control gene expression in response to cell population density, and this phenomenon is called quorum sensing. In Gram-negative bacteria, quorum sensing typically involves the production, release and detection of acylated homoserine lactone signalling molecules called autoinducers. Vibrio harveyi, a Gram-negative bioluminescent marine bacterium, regulates light production in response to two distinct autoinducers (AI-1 and AI-2). AI-1 is a homoserine lactone. The structure of AI-2 is not known. We have suggested previously that V. harveyi uses AI-1 for intraspecies communication and AI-2 for interspecies communication. Consistent with this idea, we have shown that many species of Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria produce AI-2 and, in every case, production of AI-2 is dependent on the function encoded by the luxS gene. We show here that LuxS is the AI-2 synthase and that AI-2 is produced from S-adenosylmethionine in three enzymatic steps. The substrate for LuxS is S-ribosylhomocysteine, which is cleaved to form two products, one of which is homocysteine, and the other is AI-2. In this report, we also provide evidence that the biosynthetic pathway and biochemical intermediates in AI-2 biosynthesis are identical in Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, V. harveyi, Vibrio cholerae and Enterococcus faecalis. This result suggests that, unlike quorum sensing via the family of related homoserine lactone autoinducers, AI-2 is a unique, 'universal' signal that could be used by a variety of bacteria for communication among and between species.