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Chemical Communication Yields Natural Product

By: Kassandra Decker

Figure 1. Barriered culturing device that separates multiple species and demonstrates chemical communication with small molecules. Figure taken from Shi et al 2017.

In the environment, micro-environments can be found but are difficult to study due to their minute size. Thus, little is known about the interactions that occur between the microbial community and the secondary metabolites produced. The natural products yielded by the microbial communities facilitate the production of many pharmaceutical drugs. Shi and colleagues constructed a co-culturing device that replicated the spatial arrangement in micro-environments of microbial communities but included a barrier that allowed for chemical communication among the Cladosporium species with Bacillus subtilis and two variations of a Streptomyces strain (Figure 1). The data analyzed determined B. subtilis would release surfactants to inhibit the Cladosporium species' release of diphenyl ethers. The Streptomyces strains demonstrated an increase of cyclic dipeptides through secretion of secondary metabolites. Understanding how and why microorganisms communicate is essential for many pharmaceutical companies because of the natural products that are yielded which are used towards producing medicine.  

Original Article:

Shi Y, Pan C, Wang K, Chen X, Wu X, Chen CA et al. (2017). Synthetic multispecies microbial communities reveals shifts in secondary metabolism and facilitates cryptic natural product discovery. Environmental Microbiology. 19(9):3606–3618.