Team:KAIT Japan/Project

Project

Back Ground

Bacteria detect the concentration of its friends, called Quorum Sensing, and the sensing system is one of the communication tools between microbes. It is related also to formation of biofilm and to pathogenicity.
As the Quorum Sensing of Gram-negative bacterias, Acyl-Homoserine Lactone
(AHL ) is released to recognize each other. 2007, the team of Chiba University made the vacteria production of aiia to decrease the AHL.
We considered application of the system to make a colony layer on a colony layer by
depressing of Quorum Sensing.

Purpose

We make bacteria that have transgene of AiiA, and get the bacteria to produce abundance of AiiA.The abundance of AiiA inhibit AHL,and General, colony and colony don’t approach by AHL.
Our projects were done to approach and overlap.

Word

Quorum Sensing

Quorum sensing is a system of stimulus and response correlated to population density.
Many species of bacteria use quorum sensing to coordinate gene expression according to the density of their local population. In similar fashion, some social insects use quorum sensing to determine where to nest.

AHL and AiiA

AHL is [N-] acyl-homoserine lactones.
AHL is a small transmitter that is used in quorum sensing system autoinducer (AI) is known as. AHL is present in many gram-negative bacteria
In low cell density, AHL becomes low concentration, and AHL becomes high concentration in high cell density.
At high cell densities, the AIs can accumulate to a concentration sufficient for activation of related regulatory genes. Because the concentration of AHL's is a key factor in determining virulence gene expression in several pathogenic bacteria, it is possible to develop a strategy for disease control by controlling production of AIs or eliminating AIs produced by pathogenic bacteria.

AiiA, an enzyme that inactivates the acylhomoserine lactone quorum-sensing signal.