This award supports the collaborative efforts of Alan Decho, Stanley Angel, Lee Ferguson and John Ferry, all at the University of South Carolina, to understand autoinducer molecules, how these molecules are transformed under environmental conditions, and how the molecules interact with protein receptors. Acylated homoserine lactones, AHLs, are a family of molecules present in gram-negative bacteria. The AHLs allow one bacterium to communicate with others nearby, leading to quorum sensing. This project will address four major questions: 1) How do specific environmental stressors such as light, pH, humidity and metal ions modify AHL molecules; (2) How do changes in the AHLs alter complexation to regulatory proteins; (3) Which changes in AHL/Protein Binding result in changes in gene expression; and (4) Can Raman and fluorescence-lifetime signatures be used to image and quantify in situ intact and altered AHLs?
This project is funded through the Collaborative Research in Chemistry Program (CRC) and provides outstanding opportunities for undergraduates and graduate students to acquire knowledge and skills in very broad areas of environmental analytical chemistry, spectroscopy and microbiology. New techniques, including high-throughput multivariate environmental transformation studies and new spectroscopic tools that can detect low levels of AHLs in complex environmental samples will be developed. The implications of this chemical signalling pathway in microbial mats and other environmental settings will be explored.
