Silva Kalinga Pavan, Chellamuthu Prithiviraj, Boedicker James Q
Department of Physics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.
Department of Physics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.
Biophys J. 2017 Mar 14;112(5):1037-1044. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2017.01.010.
Diverse microbial communities coordinate group behaviors through signal exchange, such as the exchange of acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs) by Gram-negative bacteria. Cellular communication is prone to interference by neighboring microbes. One mechanism of interference is signal destruction through the production of an enzyme that cleaves the signaling molecule. Here we examine the ability of one such interference enzyme, AiiA, to modulate signal propagation in a spatially distributed system of bacteria. We have developed an experimental assay to measure signal transduction and implement a theoretical model of signaling dynamics to predict how the system responds to interference. We show that titration of an interfering strain into a signaling network tunes the spatial range of activation over the centimeter length scale, quantifying the robustness of the signaling network to signal destruction and demonstrating the ability to program systems-level responses of spatially heterogeneous cellular networks.
多样的微生物群落通过信号交换来协调群体行为，比如革兰氏阴性菌交换酰基高丝氨酸内酯（AHLs）。细胞通讯容易受到邻近微生物的干扰。一种干扰机制是通过产生一种能切割信号分子的酶来破坏信号。在此，我们研究了一种这样的干扰酶AiiA在细菌空间分布系统中调节信号传播的能力。我们开发了一种实验测定法来测量信号转导，并建立了信号动力学的理论模型，以预测该系统对干扰的反应。我们表明，将干扰菌株滴定到信号网络中会在厘米长度尺度上调节激活的空间范围，量化了信号网络对信号破坏的稳健性，并证明了对空间异质细胞网络的系统级反应进行编程的能力。
