Screening the Turkish Flora for Anti-Quorum Sensing Activities

Quorum sensing (QS) is defined as the coordination of several behaviours in bacteria depending on their population density that sensed by small secreted signal molecules. As these behaviours include the virulence and pathogenic functions, inhibiton of quorum sensing may have the potential for therapeutic applications in medicine, agriculture and other areas. Plants represent important sources for compounds inhibiting QS, because of their high biodiversity and co-existence with microorganisms. Up to date, only small numbers of plant species have been assessed for the natural compounds inhibiting this particular mechanism directly or indirectly. Turkish flora is very rich for endemics and medicinal plants with antibacterial activity, however there is no sufficient data on anti- QS activity of local species. In this study, aquoes methanolic extracts of fifteen different plant species were screened for their quorum sensing inhibiton based on the assay with Chromobacterium violaceum 12472 strain. As a result, one of the Quercus species showed anti quorum sensing activity in their leaf extracts.