Saline Environments as a Source of Potential Quorum Sensing Disruptors to Control Bacterial Infections: A Review
Metadata
Show full item recordEditorial
MDPI
Materia
Quorum sensing Quorum quenching Marine habitat Saline environment Hypersaline habitat Marine pathogens
Date
2019-03-25Referencia bibliográfica
Torres, M., Dessaux, Y., & Llamas, I. (2019). Saline environments as a source of potential quorum sensing disruptors to control bacterial infections: A review. Marine drugs, 17(3), 191.
Abstract
Saline environments, such as marine and hypersaline habitats, are widely distributed
around the world. They include sea waters, saline lakes, solar salterns, or hypersaline soils.
The bacteria that live in these habitats produce and develop unique bioactive molecules and
physiological pathways to cope with the stress conditions generated by these environments. They
have been described to produce compounds with properties that differ from those found in non-saline
habitats. In the last decades, the ability to disrupt quorum-sensing (QS) intercellular communication
systems has been identified in many marine organisms, including bacteria. The two main mechanisms
of QS interference, i.e., quorum sensing inhibition (QSI) and quorum quenching (QQ), appear to be a
more frequent phenomenon in marine aquatic environments than in soils. However, data concerning
bacteria from hypersaline habitats is scarce. Salt-tolerant QSI compounds and QQ enzymes may be
of interest to interfere with QS-regulated bacterial functions, including virulence, in sectors such as
aquaculture or agriculture where salinity is a serious environmental issue. This review provides a
global overview of the main works related to QS interruption in saline environments as well as the
derived biotechnological applications.