Quorum Signal Inhibitors and Their Potential Use against Fish Diseases

Abstract

Quorum sensing (QS) is a process of bacterial communication used to control group behaviors, including bioluminescence, virulence factor production, biofilm formation, and biofilm antimicrobial tolerance. Many aquatic bacterial pathogens such as Aeromonas, Vibrio, and Edwardsiella spp. use QS to regulate virulence factor production. The disruption of QS has been shown to be an effective strategy in the competition between higher organisms and bacteria and more recently between bacterial species. For this reason, QS disruption has been proposed as a strategy to prevent bacterial pathogenicity. In this review, we summarize the current literature and illustrate the value of QS inhibitors in controlling virulence production in aquatic bacterial pathogens. This represents a new, nonantibiotic strategy to combat fish diseases.

Received August 11, 2015; accepted January 26, 2016

Acknowledgements

We thank C. Booth for assistance with figure preparation and two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions.