title: Quercetin Influences Quorum Sensing in Food Borne Bacteria: In-Vitro and In-Silico Evidence.
abstract: Quorum sensing (QS) plays a vital role in regulating the virulence factor of many food borne pathogens, which causes severe public health risk. Therefore, interrupting the QS signaling pathway may be an attractive strategy to combat microbial infections. In the current study QS inhibitory activity of quercetin and its anti-biofilm property was assessed against food-borne pathogens using a bio-sensor strain. In addition in-silico techniques like molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation studies were applied to screen the quercetin's potentiality as QS inhibitor. Quercetin (80 μg/ml) showed the significant reduction in QS-dependent phenotypes like violacein production, biofilm formation, exopolysaccharide (EPS) production, motility and alginate production in a concentration-dependent manner. Synergistic activity of conventional antibiotics with quercetin enhanced the susceptibility of all tested pathogens. Furthermore, Molecular docking analysis revealed that quercetin binds more rigidly with LasR receptor protein than the signaling compound with docking score of -9.17 Kcal/mol. Molecular dynamics simulation predicted that QS inhibitory activity of quercetin occurs through the conformational changes between the receptor and quercetin complex. Above findings suggest that quercetin can act as a competitive inhibitor for signaling compound towards LasR receptor pathway and can serve as a novel QS-based antibacterial/anti-biofilm drug to manage food-borne pathogens.
authors.affiliation: Department of Food science and Technology, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India.
authors.forename: Venkadesaperumal
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gopu
authors.affiliation: Department of Bio-informatics, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India.
authors.forename: Chetan Kumar
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Meena
authors.affiliation: Department of Food science and Technology, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India.
authors.forename: Prathapkumar Halady
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Shetty
mesh_terms: D000464:Alginates / Q000378:metabolism; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000494:pharmacology; D001419:Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000378:metabolism; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D001665:Binding Sites; D018441:Biofilms / Q000187:drug effects; D005516:Food Microbiology; D020723:Glucuronic Acid / Q000378:metabolism; D006603:Hexuronic Acids / Q000378:metabolism; D007711:Klebsiella pneumoniae / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests; D062105:Molecular Docking Simulation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011135:Polysaccharides, Bacterial / Q000378:metabolism; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D011794:Quercetin / Q000494:pharmacology*; D053038:Quorum Sensing / Q000187:drug effects*; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D015534:Trans-Activators / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D000464:Alginates; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D006603:Hexuronic Acids; C080365:LasR protein, Pseudomonas aeruginosa; D011135:Polysaccharides, Bacterial; D015534:Trans-Activators; C096957:YenR protein, Yersinia enterocolitica; D020723:Glucuronic Acid; D011794:Quercetin