Author: Robby Berman / Source: Big Think
- When bacteria broadcast their presence, bacteriophages may be listening
- A stunning discovery of cross-domain communication
- Research could lead to new, custom- targeted medicines
Cholera is caused by a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae, and along and other disease-causing bacteria, it engages in something called “quorum sensing.” The word “quorum” in this context carries pretty much the same meaning as it does for human organizations where it’s the number of participants required to conduct official business.
In bacteria, that means having enough bacteria present, and “business” is causing illness. Quorum sensing, then, is bacteria chemically polling the local environment to find if there are enough of their own kind to get down to making some disease. Scientists have just discovered that some bacteria-infecting viruses, such as the one above, can listen in on this chemical conversation to ascertain the optimal time to start killing the nearby bacterial population. Their research was published this month in the Cell.“”As scientists, this is just unimaginable to us,” says Squibb Professor of molecular biology Bonnie Bassler of Princeton University. “We were delighted and skeptical at the same time. It was almost too good to be true.”
Bacteria’s molecular chatter
The bacteria don’t actually talk, of course. They find each other via the presence of a particular molecule, DPO. If they detect enough DPO molecules nearby, says Bassler, “This tells them they have enough neighbors around to do collective behavior.”
Bassler’s grad student Justin Silpe was looking for other bacteria that perform quorum sensing using DPO when he happened across a virus, VP882, in a DNA repository, that had a receptor for DPO.
(VP882 is a member of a bacteria-killing family of bacteriophages, or “phages.”) He proposed to Bassler that VP882 could “listen in” on the bacterial quorum headcount. “There’s never, ever…The post The VP882 virus ‘eavesdrops’ on bacteria to kill appeared first on FeedBox.