BREAKING BACTERIAL CODE

Quorum sensing (QS) is a technique of cell-to-cell communication used by bacterial pathogens to control virulence, biofilm production, and antibiotic tolerance and thus contributes to long-standing and intractable infections. Studies on QS pathways are important in development of new therapeutic interventions against the backdrop of growing antimicrobial resistance. This review recounts the molecular QS phenomenon in the Gram- positive and Gram- negative bacteria and dwells upon the heterogeneity of autoinducers, receptors, chassis and regulatory networks. There is a critical examination of the pathogenic importance of QS, particularly in the propagation of biofilm-associated infections and multidrug-resistant infections. Potential solutions in the form of strategies to interfere with bacterial communication, or quorum quench (QQ) are described to include enzymatic degradation of the signals, inhibitors of signal biosynthesis, utilisation of signal receptor antagonists and natural product quorum sensing Inhibitors (QSIs). The promising emerging directions of therapy are hyper-specific anti-virulence strategies, the development of nanotechnology, and the combination with traditional antibiotics. The study also involves future directions of CRISPR-based editing of QS genes, multi-omics tools to discover pathways, and non-medical applications of CRISPR as biotechnology and agriculture. Relating knowledge of mechanism and therapeutic research, with the help of this review one could see the possibility of destroying the networks involved in bacterial communication as a new method of treating infectious diseases and reducing antibiotic resistance.