Quorum Sensing - Talking Bacteria
 We used to think of and study bacteria as reclusive, shy organisms until about a decade ago. How wrong we were. What's become clear in the last ten years is that all bacteria "talk" to each other. In fact, bacteria are jabbering like crazy.
This communication process is called quorum sensing, a scientific name for bacteria exchanging information with "chemical words". Bacteria are actually kind of subtle, little, one-celled organisms, because when you ingest some bacteria they don't immediately start releasing toxins. That would be a huge red flag to your immune system. No, pathogenic bacteria wait. They eat, grow and divide . Then they release what scientists call quorum-sensing molecules. A variety of different molecules can be used as signals. One common class of signaling molecules are a family of autoinducers known as AI-2 in both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. Oligopeptides can also be used as signals.
Quorum -sensing molecules recognize whether there are a lot of other pathogens around. When it dawns on them that there are enough of their buddies around they all release their toxins together. Instead of one nasty little bacterium trying to make you sick, you have almost a billion bacteria attacking at once. As a community bacteria can do a lot more harm than when they act alone.
Read on to find out how Chrisal Probiotics can be used to suppress bacteria, through inhibition of quorum sensing and blocking the formation of biofilms. Chrisal's probiotics interfere with the pathogen's yackety - yack, therefore interfering with their ability to attack as a community or "pack". Silence is golden.
Notes to Diagrams:
(left diagram) In low density, the concentration of the autoinducer (blue dots) is relatively low and the substance production is restricted.
(right diagram) In high density, the concentration of the autoinducer is high and the bacterial substances (red dots) are produced.
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