Self versus group-sensing in bacteria

细菌的自我感知与群体感知

基本信息

批准号：
2106212
负责人：
Martin Schuster
金额：
$ 71.13万
依托单位：
Oregon State University
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2021
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2021-07-01 至 2025-06-30
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2106212&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Self versus group sensing bacteria

项目摘要

This project investigates quorum sensing, a widespread cell-cell communication process in microbes relevant to natural ecosystems, agriculture, and medicine. Quorum sensing controls collective microbial behaviors such as interactions with plants and animals, growth on surfaces, and production of antibiotics. The studies proposed here will explore how coordinated behaviors in bacterial populations emerge from distinct quorum sensing mechanisms in single cells. These investigations will reveal general principles that govern communication and cooperation between individuals, and will provide the knowledge to engineer or manipulate quorum sensing pathways in a variety of biotechnological applications. The project will train a diverse group of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students in a cross-disciplinary environment that combines biological and mathematical approaches. It will further provide graduate students with science communication training and outreach opportunities to broaden their skill set.Quorum sensing is a ubiquitous mechanism in microbes that coordinates collective behaviors through self-produced chemical signals. Although major advances have been made in this field, there are still large gaps in our understanding of the functional capacity of quorum sensing. Quorum sensing is generally perceived as a cell density-dependent on/off switch that synchronizes gene expression in a population, although recent experimental studies show great response heterogeneity on a cellular scale. This project will holistically characterize the mechanisms that govern this spectrum of quorum responses in the widely studied bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The objective is to test a model that distinguishes between two quorum-sensing modes: group-sensing mediated by extracellular signal feedback, and self-sensing mediated by intracellular signal feedback. The central hypothesis is that genetic network architecture and environmental factors determine the quorum-sensing mode in P. aeruginosa, which in turn shapes response patterns at cellular and population scales. A range of experimental approaches and mathematical modeling will be employed to investigate this hypothesis. The results attained from this project will provide a systems-level understanding of the principles that govern decision-making in bacterial populations. They will find application in the design, analysis, and control of multicellular signaling circuits in synthetic biology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目调查了与自然生态系统，农业和医学相关的微生物中的广泛的细胞 - 细胞通信过程。法规传感控制集体微生物行为，例如与动植物的相互作用，表面上的生长以及抗生素的产生。这里提出的研究将探讨细菌种群中的协调行为如何从单个细胞中不同的法定人数感应机制中出现。这些调查将揭示管理个人之间沟通和合作的一般原则，并将在各种生物技术应用中为工程师提供知识或操纵法定人数传感途径。该项目将在结合生物学和数学方法的跨学科环境中培训各种各样的毕业生，本科生和高中生。它将进一步为研究生提供科学沟通培训和推广机会，以扩大其技能。Quorum Sensing是微生物中无处不在的机制，可以通过自行生产的化学信号来协调集体行为。尽管在这一领域已经取得了重大进展，但我们对法定人数感测功能能力的理解仍然存在很大的差距。通常将群体传感视为依赖于/关闭开关的细胞密度，它同步了人群中的基因表达，尽管最近的实验研究表明在细胞尺度上显示出极大的反应异质性。该项目将整体表征在广泛研究的细菌铜绿菌中控制这种法定响应范围的机制。目的是测试一个区分两种法定感应模式的模型：由细胞外信号反馈介导的组感应，以及由细胞内信号反馈介导的自感应。中心假设是遗传网络结构和环境因素决定了铜绿假单胞菌中的群体感应模式，这又构成了细胞和种群尺度下的响应模式。将采用一系列实验方法和数学建模来研究这一假设。该项目得出的结果将提供对控制细菌种群决策的原理的系统级别的理解。他们将在合成生物学中的多细胞信号传导电路的设计，分析和控制中找到应用。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并且使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准，被视为值得通过评估来提供支持。