Chemical Biology Approaches to Interrogate Interspecies Communication in Streptococci

有了这个奖项，化学部门的生命过程化学项目资助了内华达大学里诺分校的Yftah Tal-Gan博士，研究细菌如何相互交流。细菌利用化学信号进行交流，评估它们的种群大小，并改变它们的行为，这一点已经得到了证实。到目前为止，研究的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体细菌种群中的作用在很大程度上未被探索。通过合成信号模拟的发展，改变一种或多种细菌物种的行为，确定了通信对复杂细菌群落（微生物组）行为的影响。该项目的发现可能为管理农业、生物制造和环境管理等不同生态系统中的细菌群落提供方法。这项研究允许高中生、本科生和研究生以及博士后获得合成化学、分析化学、微生物学和分子生物学技术方面的专门培训。该项目还整合了两个外展项目，以介绍高中生和本科生在化学和生物学的界面上进行研究。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，该校的本科生和教师参与了研究。这些学生中有许多来自社会经济弱势群体和第一代大学背景，他们接受过STEM领域优秀工作的培训。本项目利用化学工具研究链球菌之间种间交流的作用。细菌依赖于一种称为群体感应（QS）的细胞-细胞信号机制，这使得相关表型在其自然栖息地中茁壮成长。链球菌利用QS这一种种内交流机制与其他链球菌进行交流（即种间交流），并采用不同的策略干扰其他链球菌的交流，作为在混合菌群中占据优势地位的手段。本跨学科项目将化学生物学方法与分子生物学技术相结合，描绘QS干扰链球菌之间的分子机制，明确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细菌通信干扰和竞争的理解，并从根本上推动QS和社会微生物学领域的发展。此外，本研究开发的化学探针具有广泛适用性的潜力，可用于研究复杂细菌群落的自然生态位（微生物组）。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.