Quorum sensing is a really tricky topic to understand. It is basically how bacteria talk with one another. One bacteria sends out a chemical signal and the bacteria that it is sent to has a receptor, if it can receive the signal it reacts accordingly and if it can’t than the signal will never be received. Signals can tell bacteria to do a whole bunch of different things, express a different color pigment, move to a new area where there are different nutrients, etc. The way that we are testing for this in lab is by plating a mutant bacteria that no longer can produce it’s own signal. However, it can receive signals and the way that we could tell if it receives a signal from other bacteria on the plate is by seeing what color the mutant colony turns. We are looking for the mutant colony to turn purple. We are sending the mutant many different signals. The signals are coming from 4 different bacterial colonies and all the signals are different sizes. If the mutant colony turns purple close to where the signals were provided that means that it can receive that kind of signal from that kind of bacteria.
Recent comments