Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2004 Nov;14(11):648-56.
doi: 10.1016/j.tcb.2004.09.012.

Bacterial social engagements

Jennifer M Henke  1 , Bonnie L Bassler
Affiliations
Review

Bacterial social engagements

Jennifer M Henke et al. Trends Cell Biol. 2004 Nov.

Abstract

Quorum sensing is a process that enables bacteria to communicate using secreted signaling molecules called autoinducers. This process enables a population of bacteria to regulate gene expression collectively and, therefore, control behavior on a community-wide scale. Quorum sensing is widespread in the bacterial world and, generally, processes controlled by quorum sensing are unproductive when undertaken by an individual bacterium but become effective when undertaken by the group. Cell-cell communication can occur within and between bacterial species, and between bacteria and their eukaryotic hosts, which suggests that the chemical lexicon is complex. Prokaryotic and eukaryotic mechanisms for enhancing and inhibiting quorum sensing have been identified, which suggests that manipulation of quorum-sensing-controlled processes could be common in bacterial-bacterial and bacterial-eukaryotic associations.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

Substances

LinkOut - more resources