ArticleNature communications2023
Quorum sensing as a mechanism to harness the wisdom of the crowds.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed.
- Distinctive Lacritin Cleavage-Potentiated Bactericidal Alteration of thebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- It takes a village: how plant-associated bacterial communities socialise to shape plant growth and health.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- You Talking to Me? Quorum Sensing in Symbiotic Microbes and Their Response to Environmental Variation.Microorganisms · 2026Review
- A global stress alarmone couples nutrient limitation to suppression of social signaling in bacteria.iScience · 2026Article
- Identification and characterization of quorum-quenching enzyme AiiF fromApplied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- The Fruit Biome: Biofilm Dynamics and Consumer Health Risks with Focus on the Apple (International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- The interplay of specialized metabolites, antibiotic resistance, and virulence in Enterococcus faecium: in silico analysis of bacterial genomes.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Community context reshapes microbial proteomes and reduces functional overlap.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Hijacking competitor-derived signals: RcsB/C drivesApplied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Bet-hedging via Kelly betting in a limited environment leads to logistic growth in the Game of Fitness.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Microbial medicines: Unlocking the therapeutic potential of the microbiome in cancer treatment.Journal of controlled release : official journal of the Controlled Release Society · 2026Review
- Review
- An inhalable gallium-polyphenol nanoparticle blocks bacterial electron transport chain and signal transduction for anti-biofilm therapy.Bioactive materials · 2026Article
- Contribution of a Novel TetR/AcrR Family Transcriptional Regulator RalT of Ralstonia pseudosolanacearum Strain OE1-1 to the Fine-Tuning of Its Virulence.MicrobiologyOpen · 2026Article
- Data-driven spatial-temporal framework for exploring the heterogeneity and temporality of sepsis.Chinese medical journal · 2026Review
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Next-generation anti-infective drugs in the post-antibiotic era: focusing on anti-virulence agents targeting the bacterial quorum sensing system.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Review
- Article
- Antibacterial Immunotherapy: Mechanistic Insights, Emerging Therapeutic Strategies, and Clinical Translation.Infection and drug resistance · 2026Review
- A Critical Review of Quorum-Sensing Inhibition Strategies in Klebsiella Pneumoniae.Current microbiology · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bacteria release and sense small molecules called autoinducers in a process known as quorum sensing. The prevailing interpretation of quorum sensing is that by sensing autoinducer concentrations, bacteria estimate population density to regulate the expression of functions that are only beneficial when carried out by a sufficiently large number of cells. However, a major challenge to this interpretation is that the concentration of autoinducers strongly depends on the environment, often rendering autoinducer-based estimates of cell density unreliable. Here we propose an alternative interpretation of quorum sensing, where bacteria, by releasing and sensing autoinducers, harness social interactions to sense the environment as a collective. Using a computational model we show that this functionality can explain the evolution of quorum sensing and arises from individuals improving their estimation accuracy by pooling many imperfect estimates - analogous to the 'wisdom of the crowds' in decision theory. Importantly, our model reconciles the observed dependence of quorum sensing on both population density and the environment and explains why several quorum sensing systems regulate the production of private goods.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.