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Evolution of LuxR solos in bacterial communication: receptors and signals

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Abstract

Cell–cell communication in bacteria needs chemical signals and cognate receptors. Many Gram-negative bacteria use acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs) and cognate LuxR-type receptors to regulate their quorum sensing (QS) systems. The signal synthase-receptor (LuxI–LuxR) pairs may have co-evolved together. However, many LuxR solo (orphan LuxR) regulators sense more signals than just AHLs, and expand the regulatory networks for inter-species and inter-kingdom communication. Moreover, there are also some QS regulators from the TetR family. LuxR solo regulators might have evolved by gene duplication and horizontal gene transfer. An increased understanding of the evolutionary roles of QS regulators would be helpful for engineering of cell–cell communication circuits in bacteria.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31570038).

Supporting information

Supplementary Table 1—Summary of characterized LuxR solo homologs in bacteria.

Supplementary Table 2—List of LuxR_Vha homologs in the TetR family.

Supplementary Fig. 1—Structure-based multiple sequence alignment (MSA) analysis of the LuxR_Vfi homologs.

Supplementary Fig. 2—Structure prediction and comparison of the LuxR_Vfi homologs.

Supplementary Fig. 3—The evolutionary conservation in LuxR_Vfi homologs estimated and visualized by the ConSurf server (Ashkenazy et al. 2016).

Supplementary Fig. 4—Structure-based MSA analysis of the LuxR_Vha homologs.

Supplementary Fig. 5—Structure prediction of the LuxR_Vha and comparison with the MDR regulators.

Supplementary Fig. 6—The evolutionary conservation in LuxR_Vha and MDR regulators estimated and visualized by the ConSurf server (Ashkenazy et al. 2016).

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  1. Key Laboratory of Experimental Marine Biology, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China

    Gangming Xu

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Correspondence to Gangming Xu.

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Xu, G. Evolution of LuxR solos in bacterial communication: receptors and signals. Biotechnol Lett 42, 181–186 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-019-02763-6

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