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Updated: Jul 11, 2025

Anti-virulent Disruption of Pathogenic Biofilms using Engineered Quorum-quenching Lactonases
Published on: January 1, 2016
Interception of Epoxide ring to quorum sensing system in Enterococcus faecalis and Staphylococcus aureus
Mohammed Y Refai1, Ahmed M Elazzazy1, Said E Desouky2,3
1Department of Biological Science, College of Science, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Abstract:
Quorum sensing inhibitor (QSI) has been attracting attention as anti-virulence agent which disarms pathogens of their virulence rather than killing them. QSI marking cyclic peptide-mediated QS in Gram-positive bacteria is an effective tool to overcome the crisis of antibiotic-dependent chemotherapy due to the emergence of drug resistance strain, e.g., methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Vancomycin resistant Enterococci (VRE). From a semi-large-scale screening thus far carried out, two Epoxide compounds, Ambuic acid and Synerazol, have been found to efficiently block agr and fsr QS systems, suggesting that the Epoxide group is involved in the mode of action of these QSIs. To address this notion, known natural Epoxide compounds, Cerulenin and Fosfomycin were examined for QSI activity for the agr and fsr systems in addition to in silico and SAR studies. As a result, most of investigated Epoxide containing antibiotics correlatively interfere with QSI activity for the agr and fsr systems under sublethal concentrations.
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