Quercetin Influences Quorum Sensing in Food Borne Bacteria: In-Vitro and In-Silico Evidence

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 10; no. 8; p. e0134684
• Main Authors: Gopu, Venkadesaperumal, Meena, Chetan Kumar, Shetty, Prathapkumar Halady
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 06.08.2015; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Acids; Alginates - metabolism; Alginic acid; Amino Acid Sequence; Anti-Bacterial Agents - pharmacology; Antibiotics; Bacteria; Bacteria - drug effects; Bacteria - metabolism; Bacterial Proteins - chemistry; Bacterial Proteins - metabolism; Binding Sites; Biofilms; Biofilms - drug effects; Biology and Life Sciences; Biosensors; Causes of; Chromobacterium violaceum; Exopolysaccharides; Flavonoids; Food; Food contamination; Food Microbiology; Food poisoning; Food science; Gene expression; Glucuronic Acid - metabolism; Health risks; Hexuronic Acids - metabolism; Inhibitors; Klebsiella pneumoniae; Klebsiella pneumoniae - drug effects; Klebsiella pneumoniae - physiology; Medicine and Health Sciences; Microbial Sensitivity Tests; Microorganisms; Molecular chains; Molecular docking; Molecular Docking Simulation; Molecular dynamics; Molecular Sequence Data; Pathogens; Phenotypes; Physiological aspects; Polysaccharides, Bacterial - metabolism; Prevention; Protein Structure, Tertiary; Proteins; Pseudomonas aeruginosa; Pseudomonas aeruginosa - drug effects; Pseudomonas aeruginosa - physiology; Public health; Quercetin; Quercetin - pharmacology; Quorum sensing; Quorum Sensing - drug effects; Sequence Alignment; Signal transduction; Signaling; Simulation; Trans-Activators - chemistry; Trans-Activators - metabolism; Violacein; Virulence; Virulence factors; Yersinia enterocolitica; India; United States > US
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134684

Quorum sensing (QS) plays a vital role in regulating the virulence factor of many food borne pathogens, which causes severe public health risk. Therefore, interrupting the QS signaling pathway may be an attractive strategy to combat microbial infections. In the current study QS inhibitory activity of quercetin and its anti-biofilm property was assessed against food-borne pathogens using a bio-sensor strain. In addition in-silico techniques like molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation studies were applied to screen the quercetin's potentiality as QS inhibitor. Quercetin (80 μg/ml) showed the significant reduction in QS-dependent phenotypes like violacein production, biofilm formation, exopolysaccharide (EPS) production, motility and alginate production in a concentration-dependent manner. Synergistic activity of conventional antibiotics with quercetin enhanced the susceptibility of all tested pathogens. Furthermore, Molecular docking analysis revealed that quercetin binds more rigidly with LasR receptor protein than the signaling compound with docking score of -9.17 Kcal/mol. Molecular dynamics simulation predicted that QS inhibitory activity of quercetin occurs through the conformational changes between the receptor and quercetin complex. Above findings suggest that quercetin can act as a competitive inhibitor for signaling compound towards LasR receptor pathway and can serve as a novel QS-based antibacterial/anti-biofilm drug to manage food-borne pathogens.