Quorum sensing (QS) acts in microbes through a population-density dependent manner and is important in bacterial communication and interactions. While our gut harbors an extremely high density of bacteria, the diversity and concentration of QS molecules could be much higher than any other ecosystems. How does QS regulate microbial behaviors under such conditions? What roles does QS play in our gut?
Daniel, there is no single, simple, and direct answer to our question. Some information has been published http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1111840/
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/089106000750060332?journalCode=mdi
http://171.66.127.193/content/6/40/959.full
Any microbial community produce a variety of QS molecules, and host organism has some own similar compaunds. Some bacteria can sense or produce QS signals of other species, some others can destroy them. Most of QS signals have very short life, especially in such place as gut. So, we should use very special way of research to get the answer, like this: http://www.biotechniques.com/news/Quorum-Sensing-Decoding-the-Language-of-Bacteria/biotechniques-326962.html.
QS in microbiota occurs to facilitate transfer of nutrient and other metabolites throughout the population and hence help growth of each other.
I proposed a few possibilities. The roles of QS for gut bacteria might include: 1) to advance competition of indulgences bacteria against external pathogens through disrupting the QS of external bacteria, which could prevent infection; 2) to form biofilm aggregates or to adhere to the host cells mucus, which could prevent attack from the host immunity; 3) to regulate interactions between host and gut bacteria; 4) to help keep bacteria populations homeostasis in the gut. I think those are interesting hypotheses but not easy to test.
Qourum sensing may accomplish in bacterial populations what a parliamentary democracy does in human populations.
Qourum sensing may be due to the over gene expression of particular gene (polysaccharides production) and improve the growth of particular bacteria.mainly some of the special characteristics also act as a Qourum sensing.
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