Unit of Pharmacology and Pharmacovigilance, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Via Roma 55, 56126, Pisa, Italy.
Department of Anesthesiology, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10032, USA.
Purinergic Signal. 2022 Jun;18(2):205-209. doi: 10.1007/s11302-022-09866-2. Epub 2022 Apr 30.
Quorum sensing indicates a communication process between bacteria based on a coordinate variation in gene expression aimed at coordinating a collective comportment related to the bacterial population density. Increasing pieces of evidence pointed out that a quorum-sensing system can be a regulatory program also used in the immune field to organize the density of the various immune cell populations and to calibrate their responses. In particular, such equilibrium is achieved by the ability of immune cells to perceive the density of their own populations or those of other cells in their environment, through the release of several mediators able to finely shape the cell density via coordinated changes in gene expression and protein signaling. In this regard, adenosine displays the typical characteristics of a mediator involved in the regulation of quorum sensing, thus suggesting a putative role of this nucleoside in shaping the balance between diverse immune cell populations.
群体感应是指细菌之间基于基因表达协同变化的一种通讯过程，目的是协调与细菌种群密度相关的集体行为。越来越多的证据表明，群体感应系统可以是一个免疫领域中也被用于调节各种免疫细胞群体密度并校准其反应的调控程序。特别是，免疫细胞通过释放几种能够通过协调基因表达和蛋白质信号转导来精细地改变细胞密度的介质，从而感知自身群体或环境中其他细胞的密度，以此来实现这种平衡。在这方面，腺苷显示出了一种参与群体感应调节的介质的典型特征，因此提示这种核苷可能在塑造不同免疫细胞群体之间的平衡方面发挥作用。
