Chemical Biology Approaches to Interrogate Interspecies Communication in Streptococci

通过这一奖项，化学部的生命过程化学项目资助了来自里诺内华达大学的Yftah Tal-Gan博士，以研究细菌之间的交流方式。众所周知，细菌利用化学信号进行交流，评估它们的种群数量，并改变它们的行为。到目前为止，重点是研究每个物种内细菌的交流。然而，不同细菌物种之间的物种间交流在塑造整个细菌种群中的作用在很大程度上还没有被探索。通过开发改变一个或多个细菌物种行为的合成信号模拟物，确定通信对复杂细菌群落(微生物群)行为的影响。该项目的发现可能为管理不同生态系统中的细菌群落提供手段，如农业、生物制造和环境管理。这项研究允许高中生、本科生和研究生以及博士后研究员获得合成化学、分析化学、微生物学和分子生物学技术方面的专门培训。该项目还融入了两个推广计划，介绍高中生和本科生在化学和生物的界面上进行研究。摩拉维亚学院是宾夕法尼亚州伯利恒的一所小型文理学院，该学院的本科生和教职员工参与动手研究。这些学生中的许多人来自社会经济条件较差的第一代大学背景，他们接受了STEM领域优秀工作的培训。这个项目利用化学工具来研究链球菌之间物种间交流的作用。细菌物种依赖于一种称为群体感应(QS)的细胞-细胞信号机制，这允许相关的表型在它们的自然栖息地茁壮成长。链球菌利用一种种内沟通机制QS与其他链球菌进行沟通(即种间沟通)，并采用不同的策略干扰其他链球菌的沟通，以此作为在混合细菌种群中占优势的手段。这一交叉学科项目将化学生物学方法与分子生物学技术相结合，以阐明链球菌之间qs干扰的分子机制，并确定qs在混合细菌环境中链球菌之间相互作用中的作用。该项目的发现可能会提高对链球菌以外的细菌通讯干扰和竞争的理解，并从根本上推进QS和社会微生物学日益增长的领域。此外，本研究将开发的化学探针具有广泛适用性的潜力，可用于研究自然生态位(微生物群)中的复杂细菌群落。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With this award, the Chemistry of Life Processes Program in the Chemistry Division is funding Dr. Yftah Tal-Gan from University of Nevada, Reno to investigate how bacteria communicate with each other. It has been well-established that bacteria utilize chemical signals to communicate, assess their population size, and alter their behaviors. Thus far, the focus was on studying the communication of bacteria within each species. However, the role of inter-species communications between different bacterial species in shaping the overall bacterial population was largely unexplored. Through the development of synthetic signal mimics that alter the behavior of one or more bacterial species, the effects of communications on the behavior of complex communities of bacteria (microbiomes) is determined. The discoveries of this project may provide means to manage bacterial communities in diverse ecosystems such as agriculture, biomanufacturing, and environmental management. This study allows high-school, undergraduate and graduate students, along with postdoctoral fellows to acquire specialized training in synthetic chemistry, analytical chemistry, microbiology, and molecular biology techniques. This project also integrates into two outreach programs to introduce high school and undergraduate students to research at the interface of chemistry and biology. Undergraduate students and faculty from Moravian College, a small liberal arts college in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, participate hands on research. Many of these students come from socioeconomically disadvantaged and first generation college backgrounds and are trained for excellent jobs in STEM fields.This project utilizes chemical tools to study the role of interspecies communication between streptococci. Bacterial species rely on a cell-cell signaling mechanism, termed quorum sensing (QS), and this allows related phenotypes to thrive in their natural habitat. Streptococci species utilize QS, an intra-species communication mechanism, to communicate with other streptococci species (i.e. inter-species communication) and employ different strategies to interfere with the communication of other streptococci as a means to dominate in a mixed bacterial population. This interdisciplinary project integrates chemical biology approaches with molecular biology techniques to delineate the molecular mechanism for QS interference between streptococci and define the role of QS in the interactions between streptococci in mixed bacterial milieu. Discoveries resulting from this project may improve the understanding of bacterial communication interference and competition beyond streptococci, and fundamentally advance the growing field of QS and sociomicrobiology. Moreover, the chemical probes to be developed in this study have the potential for broad applicability and can be used to study complex bacterial communities in their natural niches (microbiomes).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.