Abstract
Many bacterial cells are known to regulate their cooperative behaviors and physiological processes through a molecular mechanism called quorum sensing. Quorum sensing in Serratia marcescens JG is mediated by the synthesis of autoinducer 2 (AI-2) which is a furanosyl borate diester. In this study, the response of quorum sensing in S. marcescens JG to environment changes such as the initial pH, carbon sources and boracic acid was investigated by a bioreporter and real-time PCR analysis. The results show that glucose can affect AI-2 synthesis to the greatest extent, and 2.0 % glucose can stimulate S. marcescens JG to produce more AI-2, with a 3.5-fold increase in activity compared with control culture. Furthermore, the response of quorum sensing to changes in glucose concentration was performed by changing the amount of luxS RNA transcripts. A maximum of luxS transcription appeared during the exponential growth phase when the glucose concentration was 20.0 g/L. AI-2 production was also slightly impacted by the low initial pH. It is significant for us that the addition of boracic acid at microdosage (0.1–0.2 g/L) can also induce AI-2 synthesis, which probably demonstrated the feasible fact that the 4,5-dihydroxy-2, 3-pentanedione cyclizes by the addition of borate and the loss of water, is hydrated and is converted to the final AI-2 in S. marcescens JG.
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Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41276135, 31172010 and 31201669), 863 program (2015AA020925), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-1031), Minjiang Scholars (2013A13), Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province for Distinguished Young Scholars (2014J06010), Chinese Postdoc Fund (2014M551981) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (14CX02124A and 15CX05015A). At the same time, we thank Robert K. Thomas FRS from University of Oxford for his contribution in improving the manuscript.
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Communicated by Erko Stackebrandt.
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Sun, SJ., Liu, HJ., Weng, CH. et al. The response of Serratia marcescens JG to environmental changes by quorum sensing system. Arch Microbiol 198, 585–590 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-016-1213-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-016-1213-9