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CHEMICAL BIOLOGY

Deciphering bacterial signalling

Nature Chemistry volume 11, pages 398–399 (2019)Cite this article

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Bacterial communication is a potential strategy to control bacterial behaviours and thus, attenuate pathogen infectivity; however, identifying the signalling molecules that regulate communication pathways is challenging. Now, a robust strategy to rapidly identify previously unknown signalling peptides has been developed. This approach provides a means to map out and decipher bacterial signalling mechanisms.

Communication pathways facilitate the ability of bacteria to work together when in sufficient numbers and can influence their pathogenicity as well as their ability to acquire resistance to existing antibiotics. Understanding communication pathways can thus enable the development of treatments that reduce the risk of resistance development. However, each species utilizes a unique signalling molecule for communication with only limited cross-talk between species. This diversity in signalling requires that each molecule be identified and characterized for every species being considered. Now, a team led by Christian A. Olsen report1 a method that greatly streamlines the identification of unknown signalling molecules by providing a simple, yet powerful strategy of isolating and characterizing previously unknown thiolactone-containing signal peptides.

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Fig. 1: Native chemical ligation-driven identification of thiolactone-containing peptides.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA

    Dominic N. McBrayer & Yftah Tal-Gan

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  1. Dominic N. McBrayer
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  2. Yftah Tal-Gan
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Correspondence to Yftah Tal-Gan.

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McBrayer, D.N., Tal-Gan, Y. Deciphering bacterial signalling. Nat. Chem. 11, 398–399 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-019-0265-2

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