, 1997). Because oligopeptides are impermeable to biological membranes, dedicated proteins (ABC transporters) are used to secrete the oligopeptides into the growth environment where they function as input for two-component transduction systems. Once they interact with a membrane-bound APO866 supplier receptor, information is transmitted

via a series of phosphorylation events that ultimately coordinate gene expression. Staphylococcus aureus is a gram-positive human pathogen, which causes a variety of conditions ranging from relatively harmless conditions, such as styes, to those that constitute a medical emergency, such as toxic shock syndrome, which occurs when the bacteria enters the body through a cut, sore, catheter, or breathing tube. Recent emergence of S. aureus strains that are resistant to methicillin, the antibiotic of choice for staph

infections, has become a significant health problem. Staphylococcus aureus exhibits a highly complex adaptive behavior, with gene regulation that is population density, time, and environment specific. A part of this behavior is regulated by at least four two-component systems (Novick, 2003), one of which, termed the agr system, uses a modified octapeptide in signaling (Ji et al., 1995). Since its identification, several genes homologous to those involved in agr signaling have been identified in pathogens including Listeria monocytogenes (Autret et al., 2003), Staphylococcus saprophyticus (Sakinc et al., 2006) and Clostridium perfringens (Ohtani et al., 2009). Like the HLs, most the octapeptides also exhibit competitive

exclusion by inhibiting signaling Selleckchem GW-572016 in foreign strains (Ji et al., 1997). The precise reasoning for this is not well understood; however, it is hypothesized to be a mechanism by which strains can exclude each other from infection sites. Further, it has been shown that the octapeptide signal from Staphylococcus epidermidis inhibits virulence factor expression in S. aureus (Otto et al., 1999) without affecting growth. Therefore, the use of ‘inhibitory’ oligopeptides as treatment for certain gram-positive bacterial infections is a promising route, offering a directed therapeutic with, presumably, small chances of the target bacteria evolving resistance. Pseudomonas quinolone signal (PQS) was recently discovered as a novel, signaling molecule. It was surprising to find PQS, an inhibitor of DNA gyrase and topoisomerase (Pesci et al., 1999; McKnight, 2000), as a potential small-molecule signal due to its hydrophobicity. It has now been shown to have a role in cell-to-cell communication (Déziel et al., 2004) and is secreted in concentrated form via vesicular transport (Mashburn & Whiteley, 2005). This makes the signaling mechanism of P. aeruginosa unique in that it does not rely on diffusion-mediated communication of the small molecule, which remains concentrated within the exported vesicle.