A Sensory Kinase Impacting Carbon Utilization

A Sensory Kinase Impacting Carbon Utilization

Jerry Falwell Library, Terrace Conference Room A

Quorum sensing is the phenomenon of the way bacterial populations communicate to each other. The protein QseC is a sensory kinase that in the presence of high bacterial population, QseC activates the transcription factor QseB through phosphorylation. QseC typically responds to autoinducers, which are released from other bacterium and also responds to adrenaline and noradrenaline, which are found under stressful situations within the intestine. Quorum sensing is known to cause induction of both virulence and motility regions within the E. coli genome. Most of the previous research has been performed on enterohaemorrhagic E. coli in association with virulence. Actual physiological measurements were performed on the lab strain E. coli MG1655, without the association with pathogenicity. The measurements taken show that quorum sensing is not limited to the virulence and motility induction as shown in previous studies, and that downstream carbon metabolism is affected by this sensory kinase. The E. coli MG1655∆qseC strain was shown to have a quicker generation time than the wild type on catabolite repressing sugars. The generation time increase found with the QseC mutant demonstrates the connection between carbon metabolism and quorum sensing. It also demonstrates that the bacterial response through quorum sensing is greater than just dealing with a pathogenicity.