Effects of Communication Impairments on Quorum Sensing

Abstract

Motivations. Observations of behaviors in natural organisms provide useful insight into the complexity of selforganizing systems and the building blocks that underpin them. A behavior that is important to both biological and computational systems is quorum sensing (QS) [1], where sufficient group density triggers a collective group action. Quorum-sensing bacteria, for example, continually secrete and detect molecules called autoinducers (AIs) [2]. Under low-density conditions, AI molecules diffuse through the environment and go undetected. As the number of bacterial cells increases, so does the level of AI, eventually reaching a threshold that triggers a change in gene expression. Studies have shown that bacteria use quorum sensing in a wide variety of functions. In pathogenic bacteria, for instance, quorum sensing enables organisms to coordinate attacks and express virulence factors in sufficient quantities to overwhelm the host's immune response [3].