FIND ARTICLE

Volume: 
Issue: 
2
Date of issue: 
Due to the great genetic and physiological variability bacteria are able to colonize diffe- rent ecological niches and rapidly adapt to the changing environmental conditions. Bacterial qu- orum sensing system (QS) represents one of the important mechanisms allowing bacterial cells to regulate physiological activities on the global, highly synchronized level. This system is defined as a method of intra- and interspecies communication of bacterial cells. Significant advances in the analyses of quorum sensing components show that most if not all bacterial species have developed specialized pathways for synthesis of diffusible signal molecules and receptor proteins serving as specific receptors for such signals, as well as systems for transmission of the signals onto efector proteins and, ultimately, target genes. Global regulation using QS system regulates many basic activities of bacteria such: symbiosis, virulence, competence, conjugation, antibiotics production, sporulation, biofilms formation, swarming. In Gram-negative bacteria, acyl homoserine lactones act as signal molecules, whereas in Gram-positive bacteria this role is played by oligopeptides. There are hypotheses that QS system in presently living bacteria represents early stages of multicellular organisms evolution.

The Editorial Board
Andrzej Łukaszyk - przewodniczący, Zofia Bielańska-Osuchowska, Szczepan Biliński, Mieczysław Chorąży, Aleksander Koj, Włodzimierz Korochoda, Leszek Kuźnicki, Aleksandra Stojałowska, Lech Wojtczak

Editorial address:
Katedra i Zakład Histologii i Embriologii Uniwersytetu Medycznego w Poznaniu, ul. Święcickiego 6, 60-781 Poznań, tel. +48 61 8546453, fax. +48 61 8546440, email: mnowicki@ump.edu.pl

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