title: Cross- species communication in bacterial world.
abstract: Biofilms are the compact association of micro organisms and the communication processes in these biofilms are always a wonder. Electrical and chemical signaling mechanism are the key to understand the bacterial communication network. Quorum sensing so far has been able to explain the coordinated motion of bacteria through its chemical signaling mechanism. Bacteria residing within biofilm communities are trivial to communicate. But the recent observation in 2017 by Humphries et al. has revealed that the ion channels enabled electrical signaling mechanism can be as powerful as to attract the distant cells i.e., this signaling mechanism are capable of holding a long range behavior. As a result long range cross species communication in the bacterial world have been possible. This substantial outcome has brought this field into a new paradigm to investigate the complex co-existence of biofilm communities and distant cells with a possible scope of application in synthetic biology. In this present article, we briefly describe this new signaling mechanism and how it gives rise to a long range communication ability in bacterial communities.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Scienze Informatiche e Matematica, Università degli Studi di L' Aquila, Via Vetoio - Loc. Coppito, 67010, L'Aquila, Italy. majumdarsarangam@yahoo.in.
authors.forename: Sarangam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Majumdar
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Physics Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, 380009, Gujarat, India.
authors.forename: Sukla
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pal
keywords: Bacteria; Biofilms; Electrical signaling; Ion channels; Quorum sensing