ArticleScientific reports2016
The fitness burden imposed by synthesising quorum sensing signals.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- A global stress alarmone couples nutrient limitation to suppression of social signaling in bacteria.iScience · 2026Article
- The plastisphere paradox: microplastics as engines of antimicrobial resistance and hosts for polymer degraders.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Review
- Adaptation mechanisms of ANAMMOX bacteria to extreme environments.Archives of microbiology · 2026Review
- Rethinking Microbial Chemical Ecology: Secondary Metabolites as Concentration-Dependent Signaling Hubs with Implications for Anti-Virulence Intervention.Microorganisms · 2026Review
- Single-cell phenotypic heterogeneity shapes quorum signaling dynamics in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Free ammonia stress rewires microbial signaling networks and constrains metabolic cooperation in oxygenic photogranules.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Review
- Overcoming toxicity: How nonantagonistic microbes manage to thrive in boom-and-bust environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Quorum Sensing Coordinates Carbon and Nitrogen Metabolism to Optimize Public Goods Production in Pseudomonas fluorescens 2P24.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Phenotypic memory in quorum sensing.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Growth rate and nutrient limitation as key drivers of extracellular quorum sensing signal molecule accumulation inMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- Understanding cellular growth strategies via optimal control.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Density-dependent effects are the main determinants of variation in growth dynamics between closely related bacterial strains.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Article
- Quorum sensing in human gut and food microbiomes: Significance and potential for therapeutic targeting.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Review
- Dishonest Signaling in Microbial Conflicts.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Designing an irreversible metabolic switch for scalable induction of microbial chemical production.Nature communications · 2021Article
- A biophysical limit for quorum sensing in biofilms.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Peptide signaling without feedback in signal production operates as a true quorum sensing communication system in Bacillus subtilis.Communications biology · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
Abstract
It is now well established that bacterial populations utilize cell-to-cell signaling (quorum-sensing, QS) to control the production of public goods and other co-operative behaviours. Evolutionary theory predicts that both the cost of signal production and the response to signals should incur fitness costs for producing cells. Although costs imposed by the downstream consequences of QS have been shown, the cost of QS signal molecule (QSSM) production and its impact on fitness has not been examined. We measured the fitness cost to cells of synthesising QSSMs by quantifying metabolite levels in the presence of QSSM synthases. We found that: (i) bacteria making certain QSSMs have a growth defect that exerts an evolutionary cost, (ii) production of QSSMs negatively correlates with intracellular concentrations of QSSM precursors, (iii) the production of heterologous QSSMs negatively impacts the production of a native QSSM that shares common substrates, and (iv) supplementation with exogenously added metabolites partially rescued growth defects imposed by QSSM synthesis. These data identify the sources of the fitness costs incurred by QSSM producer cells, and indicate that there may be metabolic trade-offs associated with QS signaling that could exert selection on how signaling evolves.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.