Anti-quorum sensing natural compounds

Abstract

Increasing extent of pathogenic resistance to drugs has encouraged the seeking for new anti-virulence drugs. Many pharmacological and pharmacognostical researches are performed to identify new drugs or discover new structures for the development of novel therapeutic agents in the antibiotic treatments. Although many phytochemicals show prominent antimicrobial activity, their power lies in their anti-virulence properties. Quorum sensing (QS) is a bacterial intercellular communication mechanism, which depends on bacterial cell population density and controls the pathogenesis of many organisms by regulating gene expression, including virulence determinants. QS has become an attractive target for the development of novel anti-infective agents that do not rely on the use of antibiotics. Anti-QS compounds are known to have the ability to prohibit bacterial pathogenicity. Medicinal plants offer an attractive repertoire of phytochemicals with novel microbial disease-controlling potential, due to the spectrum of secondary metabolites present in extracts, which include phenolics, quinones, flavonoids, alkaloids, terpenoids, and polyacetylenes. They have recently received considerable attention as a new source of safe and effective QS inhibitory substances. The objective of this review is to give a brief account of the research reports on the plants and natural compounds with anti-QS potential.

Plant Phenolics and Phenolic-Enriched Extracts as Antimicrobial Agents against Food-Contaminating Microorganisms

“…Certain plant phenolic substances, including phenol-rich crude extracts, could exhibit anti-biofilm and/or anti-quorum sensing activities [105][106][107]. The phenolic compounds suppress the bacterial biofilm formation by the inhibition of different regulatory mechanisms without affecting growth: they can block the quorum sensing as mentioned above, reduce the bacterial motility altering their performance [108], decrease the superficial adhesion [109] and inhibit the expression of virulence factors associated with pathogenic behaviors [110,111].…”

Equibiotics: a new type of phyto-drug equilibrating local microbiota

“…In addition, everything seems to indicate that the flavonoid and alkaloidal effects are also related to their ability to interfere with efflux pumps and the mechanism of "quorum sensing" (QS) of undesirable bacteria in the ecosystem, a complex mechanism of action yet to be tested experimentally [34][35][36][37][38].…”

The Usefulness of Microalgae Compounds for Preventing Biofilm Infections

“…This process is known as quorum sensing (QS) [3,70]. Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria use acylated homoserine lactones and oligopeptides as autoinducers which induce the expression of QS genes [71,72].…”