A Quorum-Busting Approach to Microbiome Engineering

Several strains of bacteria exhibit coordinated phenotypes that, in some cases are regulated by a process commonly known as quorum sensing. This phenomenon has been of significant importance due to its role in virulence and and biofilm formation. However, due to their modular mechanisms of operation, synthetic biologists have been attracted to these systems, resulting in a plethora of devices inspired in such mechanisms. In this work we describe a theoretical synthetic device to control quorum-regulated products - by means of an invasion mechanism. In this system, invader strains contain a circuit that is activated by quorum signals, leading to activation of modules that regulate mortality forces over all strains in the system. We developed a mathematical model and performed numerical simulations to illustrate and analyse the evolution of this system. Our results can provide the basis for further design of synthetic gene circuits for microbiome engineering.