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Updated: May 17, 2026

Time-lapse Imaging of Bacterial Swarms and the Collective Stress Response
Published on: May 23, 2020
Bacterial quorum sensing and metabolic incentives to cooperate
Ajai A Dandekar1, Sudha Chugani, E Peter Greenberg
1Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Abstract:
The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa uses a cell-cell communication system termed "quorum sensing" to control production of public goods, extracellular products that can be used by any community member. Not all individuals respond to quorum-sensing signals and synthesize public goods. Such social cheaters enjoy the benefits of the products secreted by cooperators. There are some P. aeruginosa cellular enzymes controlled by quorum sensing, and we show that quorum sensing-controlled expression of such private goods can put a metabolic constraint on social cheating and prevent a tragedy of the commons. Metabolic constraint of social cheating provides an explanation for private-goods regulation by a cooperative system and has general implications for population biology, infection control, and stabilization of quorum-sensing circuits in synthetic biology.
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