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Updated: Sep 28, 2025

Anti-virulent Disruption of Pathogenic Biofilms using Engineered Quorum-quenching Lactonases
Published on: January 1, 2016
Quorum quenching bacteria isolated from industrial wastewater sludge to control membrane biofouling
Abdolvahed Noori1, Hyeok Kim1, Myung Hee Kim2
1Department of Environmental Engineering, Seoul National University of Science & Technology, Seoul 01811, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
N-acylhomoserine lactone (AHL)-based bacterial communication through quorum sensing (QS) is one of the main causes of biofouling. Although quorum quenching (QQ) has proven to be an effective strategy against biofouling in membrane bioreactors (MBRs) for municipal wastewater treatment, its applicability for industrial wastewater treatment has rarely been studied. This is the first study to isolate QQ strains from the activated sludge used to treat industrial wastewater containing toxic tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) and 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone. The two QQ strains from genus Bacillus (SDC-U1 and SDC-A8) survived and effectively degraded QS signals in the presence of TMAH. They also showed resistance to toxic byproducts of TMAH degradation such as ammonium and formaldehyde. They effectively reduced the biofilm formation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 and mixed community of activated sludge. The strains isolated in this study thus have the potential to be employed to reduce membrane biofouling in MBRs during the treatment of TMAH-containing wastewater.
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