Synthesis and Evaluation of Indole-Based Autoinducers on Quorum Sensing in .

() uses the autoinducer CAI-1 (cholera autoinducer 1) and several linked quorum sensing systems in order to efficiently sense its ever-changing environment and optimally coordinate population-wide gene expression. Indole has been reported as an important signal that is sensed by , and here, we report the synthesis and evaluation of a focused library of synthetic indole-CAI-1 derivatives as tools to probe quorum sensing (QS) in this human pathogen. Our results show interesting and diverging effects for several conjugates, as compared to CAI-1, on virulence factor production and biofilm formation.