Dalwadi, MP;
Pearce, P;
(2021)
Emergent robustness of bacterial quorum sensing in fluid flow.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
, 118
(10)
, Article e2022312118. 10.1073/pnas.2022312118.
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Abstract
Bacteria use intercellular signaling, or quorum sensing (QS), to share information and respond collectively to aspects of their surroundings. The autoinducers that carry this information are exposed to the external environment; consequently, they are affected by factors such as removal through fluid flow, a ubiquitous feature of bacterial habitats ranging from the gut and lungs to lakes and oceans. To understand how QS genetic architectures in cells promote appropriate population-level phenotypes throughout the bacterial life cycle requires knowledge of how these architectures determine the QS response in realistic spatiotemporally varying flow conditions. Here we develop and apply a general theory that identifies and quantifies the conditions required for QS activation in fluid flow by systematically linking cell- and population-level genetic and physical processes. We predict that when a subset of the population meets these conditions, cell-level positive feedback promotes a robust collective response by overcoming flow-induced autoinducer concentration gradients. By accounting for a dynamic flow in our theory, we predict that positive feedback in cells acts as a low-pass filter at the population level in oscillatory flow, allowing a population to respond only to changes in flow that occur over slow enough timescales. Our theory is readily extendable and provides a framework for assessing the functional roles of diverse QS network architectures in realistic flow conditions.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Emergent robustness of bacterial quorum sensing in fluid flow |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.2022312118 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022312118 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | bacterial signaling, biofilms, quorum sensing |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Mathematics |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10129138 |
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