Bluetools researchers have developed a new ultrahigh throughput screening method to find genes that interfere with bacterial communication. The study identifies a previously unknown mechanism from one of Earth’s most extreme environments.
Bacteria use quorum sensing to detect population density and adjust their behaviour accordingly. This process drives biofilm formation, virulence, and symbiotic interactions. Disrupting it — known as quorum quenching — is a promising alternative to antibiotics and chemical treatments in medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology.
Previous approaches to finding new quorum quenching genes through functional metagenomics yielded very few results. The new method combines microfluidics and functional metagenomics with a specially engineered Escherichia coli reporter strain. The strain glows when quorum sensing is disrupted, making positive hits easy to detect.
The team screened approximately 7,000,000 clones from a metagenomic library built from Antarctic plant rhizospheres. One confirmed hit emerged. It revealed a previously unreported mode of action that computational methods alone would have struggled to detect.
Microfluidics reduced costs and processing time significantly. The results also point to the rich functional diversity found in extreme environments.
The study was published as a preprint on bioRxiv by Joseph White et al.