ABSTRACT
The introduction of antibiotics in the 1930s heralded a new era in the treatment of a large number of fatal diseases, including bacterial infections, which resulted in a marked decrease in the number of deaths from diseases. Quorum sensing (QS) is a cell-to-cell communication process that enables bacteria to collectively modify behavior in response to changes in cell density, the species composition of the surrounding microbial community, and the characteristics of the environment. QS has been reported to regulate a wide range of activities involved in pathogen-host interaction and microbe-microbe competition. The discovery that a wide variety of bacteria uses QS to control virulence phenotypes makes it an attractive target for developing novel drugs. By blocking this cell-to-cell communication system, pathogens that use QS to control virulence could potentially be rendered avirulent. Bacteria communicate with each other by the use of signaling molecules, a process called "quorum sensing".
