Shukla Varsha, Bhathena Zarine
Department of Microbiology, Ramnarain Ruia College, Matunga, Mumbai 400019, India.
Department of Microbiology, Bhavan's College, Andheri, Mumbai 400058, India.
Scientifica (Cairo). 2016;2016:5823013. doi: 10.1155/2016/5823013. Epub 2016 Apr 14.
Quorum sensing (QS) mechanisms have been demonstrated to have significance in expression of pathogenicity in infectious bacteria. In Gram negative bacteria the autoinducer molecules that mediate QS are acyl homoserine lactones (AHL) and in Gram positive bacteria they are peptides called autoinducing peptides (AIP). A screening of tannin-rich medicinal plants was attempted to identify extracts that could interrupt the QS mechanisms in both Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria over a wide range of concentrations and therefore potentially be potent agents that could act as broad spectrum QS inhibitors. Six out of the twelve Indian medicinal plant extracts that were analyzed exhibited anti-QS activity in Chromobacterium violaceum 12472 and in S. aureus strain with agr:blaZ fusion over a broad range of subinhibitory concentrations, indicating that the extracts contain high concentration of molecules that can interfere with the QS mechanisms mediated by AHL as well as AIP.
群体感应（QS）机制已被证明在感染性细菌致病性表达中具有重要意义。在革兰氏阴性菌中，介导群体感应的自诱导分子是酰基高丝氨酸内酯（AHL），而在革兰氏阳性菌中，它们是称为自诱导肽（AIP）的肽。我们尝试对富含单宁的药用植物进行筛选，以鉴定出在广泛浓度范围内能够干扰革兰氏阳性菌和革兰氏阴性菌群体感应机制的提取物，因此这些提取物有可能成为强效的广谱群体感应抑制剂。在分析的12种印度药用植物提取物中，有6种在广泛的亚抑制浓度范围内，对紫色色杆菌12472和带有agr:blaZ融合基因的金黄色葡萄球菌菌株表现出抗群体感应活性，这表明这些提取物含有高浓度的能够干扰由AHL和AIP介导的群体感应机制的分子。
