The Ability of Natural Ketones to Interact with Bacterial Quorum Sensing Systems

The effect of natural ketones emitted by bacteria (2-nonanone, 2-heptanone, and 2-undecanone) on the functioning of the Quorum Sensing (QS) systems was studied. In this work, three lux-reporter strains containing the components of the LasI/LasR, RhlI/RhlR, and LuxI/LuxR QS systems were used as biosensors for N-acyl-homoserine lactones. It was shown that, at concentrations of ketones that exhibited little or no bacterial action, the ketones could modulate the QS response by suppressing the expression of the lux operon to a greater extent than the cell viability of these strains.