Communication between bacteria: Pseudomonas aeruginosa’s WhatsApp

Abstract

Communication is based on an exchange of information using a language, that goes from a sender to a receiver, which receives the message and can —or not— send some response in a determined context. Currently, it is possible to establish simple, efficient, and fast communication regardless of distance, since existing technological tools, such as mobile devices, use applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and others. The bacteria have a communication system similar to WhatsApp, known as Quorum Sensing (qs). In this article, the similarities between these communication systems will be described. Several investigations have determined that qs is a type of cell-cell communication that plays a key role in regulation of virulence gene expression in different bacterial pathogens, due to the fact that it produces and releases small chemical signals called “autoinducers”, and that these are similar to cybernetic language. The human pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa has been described to use this type of communication to modulate the production of virulence factors, provoking acute and chronic infections in immunocompromised persons and cystic fibrosis patients, causing infections to be difficult to eradicate with the supply of conventional antibiotics. Thus, it is important to understand the bacterial communication “WhatsApp” as an antibacterial control mechanism in infected individuals.

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