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The dependence of quorum sensing in Serratia marcescens JG on the transcription of luxS gene

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Abstract

Bacteria communicate with one another using chemical signal molecules. This phenomenon termed quorum sensing enables the bacteria to monitor the environment for other bacteria and to alter behavior on a population-wide scale in response to cell density. Serratia marcescens JG, a quorum sensing bacterium, can secrete a furanosyl borate diester autoinducer (AI-2) in the exponential phase of growth. In this study, to further investigate the regulation of AI-2 production in S. marcescens JG, the pfs and luxS promoter fusions to an operon luxCDABE reporter were constructed in a low-copy-number vector pBR322K, which allows an examination of transcription of the genes in the pathway for signal synthesis. The results show that the luxS expression is constitutive, and the transcription of luxS is tightly correlated with AI-2 production in S. marcescens JG because the peaks of AI-2 production and transcriptional level of luxS appear at the same time point. The close relation of the profiles of luxS transcription and AI-2 production was also confirmed with real-time PCR technology. These results support the hypothesis that the quorum sensing in S. marcescens JG is luxS dependent.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-1031), Natural Science Foundation of China (41276135, 31172010 and 31201669), Minjiang Scholars (2013A13), Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province for Distinguished Young Scholars (2014J06010), Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (200804251510), Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (ZR2010CL006), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (13CX02063A) and Research Funds for Distinguished Young Scientists in Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (xjq201209). Special thanks to Robert K. Thomas FRS from University of Oxford for his contribution in improving the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002, People’s Republic of China

    Shu-Jing Sun

  2. Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, People’s Republic of China

    Yu-Chen Liu, Jiao Sun & Hu Zhu

  3. College of Plant Protection, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002, People’s Republic of China

    Hu Zhu

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  1. Shu-Jing Sun
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  2. Yu-Chen Liu
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  3. Jiao Sun
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  4. Hu Zhu
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Correspondence to Hu Zhu.

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Communicated by Jorge Membrillo-Hernández.

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Sun, SJ., Liu, YC., Sun, J. et al. The dependence of quorum sensing in Serratia marcescens JG on the transcription of luxS gene. Arch Microbiol 197, 715–721 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-015-1099-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-015-1099-y

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