ArticleNature communications2021
Short-range quorum sensing controls horizontal gene transfer at micron scale in bacterial communities.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 126 citations in OpenAlex.
- Antibiotic-producing microorganisms: taxonomic diversity, screening strategies, and emerging and underexploited antibacterial targets.Archives of microbiology · 2026Review
- Relay Architectures and Ecological Strategies of Quorum Sensing Effects on Microbial Interactions.Environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Whole Genome Sequencing Reveals Antibiotic Resistance Heterogeneity and Metabolic Signatures of Cutibacterium acnes in Atopic Dermatitis.Current microbiology · 2026Article
- How the social lives of bacteria affect their pangenome.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- Quantitative analysis of bacterial cell-cell communication at the single-cell level using microdroplet arrays.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Phytochemical Quorum-Sensing Inhibitors Against Bacterial Pathogens: Mechanisms of Action and Translational Challenges.Current issues in molecular biology · 2026Review
- Synthetic Biology of Plants and Microbes for Agriculture, Environment, and Future Applications.Chemical reviews · 2026Review
- Electrical signalling beyond diffusion-limited microbial interactions.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Influence of cell-cell distance on the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- DAP-seq Reveals Cluster-Situated Regulator Control of NumerousbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Temperate phage evolve to integrate host stress and quorum signals in lysis-lysogeny decisions.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Diverse quorum sensing systems regulate microbial communication and biogeochemical processes in deep-sea cold seeps.Microbiome · 2025Article
- A global soil plasmidome resource unveils functional and ecological roles of plasmids in soil microbiomes.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Strategies and applications of synthetic cell communication.Nature chemical biology · 2025Review
- Quorum-Sensing C12-HSL Drives Antibiotic Resistance Plasmid Transfer via Membrane Remodeling, Oxidative Stress, and RpoS-RMF Crosstalk.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Cell-TRACTR: A transformer-based model for end-to-end segmentation and tracking of cells.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Role of horizontal gene transfer and cooperation in rhizosphere microbiome assembly.Brazilian journal of microbiology : [publication of the Brazilian Society for Microbiology] · 2025Review
- Disentangling the feedback loops driving spatial patterning in microbial communities.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In bacterial communities, cells often communicate by the release and detection of small diffusible molecules, a process termed quorum-sensing. Signal molecules are thought to broadly diffuse in space; however, they often regulate traits such as conjugative transfer that strictly depend on the local community composition. This raises the question how nearby cells within the community can be detected. Here, we compare the range of communication of different quorum-sensing systems. While some systems support long-range communication, we show that others support a form of highly localized communication. In these systems, signal molecules propagate no more than a few microns away from signaling cells, due to the irreversible uptake of the signal molecules from the environment. This enables cells to accurately detect micron scale changes in the community composition. Several mobile genetic elements, including conjugative elements and phages, employ short-range communication to assess the fraction of susceptible host cells in their vicinity and adaptively trigger horizontal gene transfer in response. Our results underscore the complex spatial biology of bacteria, which can communicate and interact at widely different spatial scales.
Indexed as
Identifiers
33875666PMC8055654W3153751420What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.