期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2013
卷号：110
期号：24
页码：9926-9931
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1307697110
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Cholera epidemics have long been known to spread through water contaminated with human fecal material containing the toxigenic bacterium Vibrio cholerae. However, detection of V. cholerae in water is complicated by the existence of a dormant state in which the organism remains viable, but resists cultivation on routine bacteriological media. Growth in the mammalian intestine has been reported to trigger "resuscitation" of such dormant cells, and these studies have prompted the search for resuscitation factors. Although some positive reports have emerged from these investigations, the precise molecular signals that activate dormant V. cholerae have remained elusive. Quorum-sensing autoinducers are small molecules that ordinarily regulate bacterial gene expression in response to cell density or interspecies bacterial interactions. We have found that isolation of pathogenic clones of V. cholerae from surface waters in Bangladesh is dramatically improved by using enrichment media containing autoinducers either expressed from cloned synthase genes or prepared by chemical synthesis. These results may contribute to averting future disasters by providing a strategy for early detection of V. cholerae in surface waters that have been contaminated with the stools of cholera patients or asymptomatic infected human carriers.
