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Inhibitory Effects of Compounds from Plumula nelumbinis on Biofilm and Quorum Sensing Against P. aeruginosa

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Abstract

Quorum sensing (QS), which controls the survival and virulence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, including the formation of biofilm, is considered to be a new target to overcome pathogens. The aim of this study was to identify new QS inhibitors against P. aeruginosa and provide potential treatments for clinical infections. In this study, 25 compounds were isolated from Plumula nelumbini. Among these compounds, C25 showed the most significant biofilm inhibition activity, reaching 44.63% at 100 μM without inhibiting bacterial growth. Furthermore, C25 showed significant inhibition activity of rhamnolipid, pyocyanin, and elastase. Further mechanistic studies have confirmed that C25 could downregulate key genes in the QS system, including lasI, lasR, lasA, lasB, and pqsR, and Molecular docking studies have shown that C25 can bind to the active sites of the LasR and PqsR receptors. The present study suggests that C25 is a promising QS inhibitor for treating P. aeruginosa infections.

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Data Availability

The datasets and referenced literature supporting the conclusions of this article are included within the article and its additional supplementary file.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the research grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81773593, 81872759, 82073977, 81803378). We sincerely thank Dr. Liang Yang from the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, Nanyang Technological University for gifting the PAO1-gfp, PAO1-lasB-gfp, PAO1-rhlA-gfp, PAO1-pqsA-gfp strain.

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  1. Honggeng Chen and Liangcai Wu contribute equally to the article.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, People’s Republic of China

    Honggeng Chen, Zhilin Huang, Likang Wang, Zhiyun Xia, Huarong Huang, Wenxia Wang, Jingyan Fang, Zimin Gu & Junxia Zheng

  2. Department of Dermatology, the Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510655, People’s Republic of China

    Liangcai Wu

  3. College of Pharmacy, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, People’s Republic of China

    Yalun Su & Pinghua Sun

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Contributions

Conceptualization: HC, LW and JZ; Methodology: YS, LW, ZX, ZH, and JF; Formal analysis and investigation: HH, WW, ZG; Writing, original draft preparation: HC; Writing, review and editing: PS and JZ; Funding acquisition: PS and JZ. All the authors approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Pinghua Sun or Junxia Zheng.

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Chen, H., Wu, L., Su, Y. et al. Inhibitory Effects of Compounds from Plumula nelumbinis on Biofilm and Quorum Sensing Against P. aeruginosa. Curr Microbiol 79, 236 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-022-02914-5

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