Our Research on Quorum Sensing
Research at QuorumEx focuses primarily of the identification of plant based substances that inhibit bacteria’s ability to communicate with one another. This communication, called quorum sensing, uses qs signaling molecules. The detection of these molecules is critical to the bacteria’s ability to initiate their disease causing activities. To date, we have isolated numerous plant compounds that have this capacity of inhibition.
It is to be expected that plants would have evolved sophisticated mechanisms for minimizing damage caused by bacterial pathogens because plants, no less than humans or other animals, are susceptible to bacterial infection. In fact, they have had far longer to develop defense mechanisms than animals, since they pre-date animals by many hundreds of millions of years.
Bacteria-like organisms (prokaryotes) were the first inhabitants of the planet, and today make up the most successful lifeform in terms of biomass. For 800 million years, photosynthetic eukaryotes, organisms that were the precursors of plants, existed in competition with bacteria - the only other life form on the planet, and there is evidence of multicellular plant life dating to 1.7 billion years ago - nearly a billion years prior to the appearance of the first primitive animal life. It would be expected then that antibacterial defense mechanisms in the plant world might have a deeper sophistication, or a more effective set of defenses against bacteria than many species within the animal world. We believe that this has proven to be the case. We have discovered a wide array of anti-quorum sensing defense mechanisms and compounds used by plants. Many, if not most, are applicable to bacteria that infect animal species.
Our research to date has focused on compounds that, in combination, diminish or disable bacterial communication systems. We have had great success at this endeavor and our products appear to be vastly more appropriate to fighting infection than existing antibiotic approaches. Our research, however, suggests a tantalizing new future possibility.
To understand this promising new approach we need to be reminded that the body already possesses a sophisticated antibacterial mechanism – the immune response system. The intelligent approach to anti-bacterial treatment should therefore factor this system heavily into its approach. Existing anti-biotic treatments have not done this. It is a brute force approach that attempts to kill the bacteria outright, frequently at great expense to the patient.
It is known that when bacteria reach their pathogenic stage, the immune response is kicked into high gear as a result of cell damage, toxins and other pathogenic effects on the host. Bacteria, in fact, attempt to maintain an extremely low profile in the host until sufficient numbers are created that can mount an effective offense. If a bacterium, on its own, became pathogenic, the resulting imbalance in the host organism, no matter how small, would trigger a localized immune response and the bacterium would be quickly dispatched. Herein lies our promising new approach.
In additin to our anti-quorum sensing research, we are currently working on techniques that can prematurely trigger a bacterium’s transition from benign to pathogenic. So instead of disabling bacterial communication and preventing a quorum, we hope to deceive the isolated bacteria into erroneously believing that large numbers exist. This premature transition will activate the hosts’ immune response early enough to eradicate the invaders. There is a small amount of evidence that some plants in fact use this mechanism as one of their defenses. This approach has enormous implications for epidemic environments as a way to terminate the epidemic through real-time prevention. In addition, the appropriate, controlled combination of preventing pathogenesis for large colonies, and early activation of pathogenesis for small colonies, holds enormous promise for the future.
The following papers and discussions on the current state of anti-quorum sensing technology are available for further reading: