Quorum Sensing System Used as a Tool in Metabolic Engineering

Abstract

Quorum sensing (QS) is a ubiquitous cell-cell communication mechanism in microbes that coordinates population-level cell behaviors, such as biofilm production, virulence, swarming motility, and bacterial persistence. Efforts to engineer QS systems to take part in metabolic network regulation represent a promising strategy for synthetic biology and pathway engineering. Recently, design, construction, and implementation of QS circuits for programmed control of bacterial phenotypes and metabolic pathways have gained much attention, but have not been reviewed recently. In this article, the architectural organizations and genetic contributions of the naturally occurring QS components to understand the mechanisms are summarized. Then, the most recent progress in application of QS toolkits to develop synthetic networks for novel cell behaviors creation and metabolic pathway engineering is highlighted. The current challenges in large-scale application of these QS circuits in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering fields are discussed and future perspectives for further engineering efforts are provided.

Redesigning regulatory components of quorum-sensing system for diverse metabolic control

“…The trade-off between cell growth and product synthesis is a big challenge in metabolic engineering 46 , 47 . Applying a QS system to autonomously and dynamically control the expression of target genes has been proven to be effective in improving production 48 . In complex metabolic networks, high-level biosynthesis of target products usually requires simultaneous regulation of multiple metabolic fluxes, which cannot be well accomplished by previously developed QS systems.…”

Quorum sensing in synthetic biology: A review

“…The quorum-sensing induced killing in an E. coli co-culture from You et al [136] and the predatorprey consortium from Balagaddé et al [137], both published in the 2000s, have paved the way for the use of quorum sensing in circuits designed to regulate microbial proportions in mixed cultures ( [138,30,32,34,33]). In what follows, we review the most recent circuits that use quorum sensing to regulate population densities in co-cultures of two or three bacterial strains.…”

“…(2) reviews on quorum sensing in synthetic biology: [29,30,31]; (3) reviews on engineered consortia using quorum sensing: [30,32,33]; (4) reviews on quorum sensing in metabolic engineering: [34,35]; (5) reviews on the role of quorum sensing in antimicrobial resistance [36,37,38,39,40]; (6) reviews on the role of quorum sensing in biofilm formation and disruption: [41,42,43,44,45,40]; (7) reviews on quorum sensing in fungi: [46,47,48,44]). This review will specifically focus on the most recent advances in using AHLs (Figure 1A) and AI-2 (Figure 1B) in bacteria to coordinate population behaviours (Figure 1C).…”

Amino acid substitutions in specific proteins correlate with farnesol unresponsiveness in Candida albicans

“…Quorum sensing (QS) is a strategy used by many microorganisms to assess population density through the production and sense of autoinducers [ 11 ]. QS in fungi is particularly important since it controls several intra- and inter-species mechanisms and behaviors, such as morphogenesis, sexual differentiation, and virulence [ 12 , 13 ].…”