Lingchong You and colleagues at Duke University claim that, although there are many variants of quorum sensing in bacteria, there seems to be one constant: the total volume of bacteria in relation to the volume of their environment is a key to quorum sensing, no matter what kind of microbe is involved.
"If there are only a few cells in an area, nothing will happen," said Anand Pai, who has worked with You on the project. "If there are a lot of cells, the secreted chemicals are high in concentration, causing the cells to perform a specific action. We wanted to find out how these cells know when they have reached a quorum."
The researchers write about the project in the July 2009 issue of Molecular Systems Biology.
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