Currently there has been a considerable interest in screening natural products for their potential quorum-sensing inhibitory potential. Though these inhibitors can be effective therapeutic agents, it is also required to investigate their possible effect on normal microbiota of human body. Not much data is available on this aspect.
To the best of my knowledge anti quorum sensing drugs are structural analogues to quorum sensing molecules or molecules that could bind and block the receptors on cell surface. Such molecules sometime inhibitory to planktonic or biofilm modes of growth or both together on target strains. When we come to the normal flora the q-sensing inhibitors would be completely new molecule for the organism as every other organism may have different signaling pathways for communication. So it may be or may not be inhibitory to normal flora.
The successful modulation of phenotype is essential for the colonisation and proliferation of bacteria within the complex ecosystem of the gastrointestinal tract. To accomplish this, bacteria obtain and respond to information from the environment. One important parameter is the other bacteria present. The ability to correctly sense self, and also others, must therefore be advantageous for the control of mass action processes by the bacterial population. Within the gut ecosystem that may include processes involved in colonisation including those determining bio film formation, pathogenicity, dispersal and DNA transfer. The ability to sense other bacteria may have important consequences for competitive and nutritional strategies controlling for example, entry into stationary phase, dispersal and the production of antimicrobial compounds. The ability to interfere with the signalling of bacteria will determine the tness of the given organism to survive in the gut and may also have therapeutic potential.
The discovery of QS in human pathogens has led to considerable interest in developing new therapeutic interventions to interfere with these signaling molecules. Thus, instead of using an antibiotic to kill pathogenic bacteria, a compound that interferes with the QS mechanism would be used to repress expression of the virulence genes responsible for the disease. Such an approach is particularly promising in light of increasing resistance to conventional antimicrobial
agents. However, the development of anti-QS therapy has been primarily directed towards non-intestinal pathogens, which do not have to deal with the huge numbers of commensal organisms present in the GI tract. The presence of this complex microbial
flora and the variety of signaling molecules that might be produced by the microbial flora or even the host itself above) greatly complicate the application of this approach to GI pathogens.
It is important to remember that positive gram-negative bacteria have the option of using one or more signaling pathways quorum sensing. It is very importante to consider the option of autoinducer 2, which can be considered a universal communication signal. But the more specific the design of new drugs, should be given fewer opportunities to alter the native flora of the different environments of human.
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