Classification of quorum-sensing peptides

Quorum-sensing (QS) enables bacterial cells to establish cell-cell communication and to regulate the expression of specific genes in response to local changes in cell density. It provides a means to coordinate the activities of cells in order to function as a multicellular unit. Quorum-sensing chemicals up till now identified as key components in bacterial cell-cell communication can broadly be divided in three groups, which contain peptidic-derived structural characteristics: N-acyl homoserine lactone derivatives (auto-inducer-1), larger quorum-sensing peptides and boron-furanone derivatives (auto-inducer-2). A quorum-sensing peptide database (Quorumpeps®) was constructed encompassing the structures as well as functionality responses. After three-dimensional optimisation of these structures, chem-informatic molecular descriptors were calculated. The resulting data-matrix was subjected to diverse multivariate analyses to cluster these peptides as well as to extract fundamental relationships between biological activity responses and structural properties (quantitative structure-property relations, QSPR)