Home Education Teaching Tools Bonnie Bassler Facilitator Questions #2
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Facilitator Questions

  1. What do you predict would occur if the CAI-1 molecule was altered? For example, if the chain length was one carbon shorter? What would happen if this molecule was added to cells simultaneously with CAI-1?

  2. If you mutated the V. cholerae CAI-1 receptor CqsS so that it does not respond to CAI-1, and compared the gene expression pattern of a strain carrying the mutated CqsS to that of a wild-type V. cholerae strain at low-cell-density what would you expect? What would happen at high-cell-density?

  3. Describe the differences between developing anti-quorum sensing molecules for pathogens that turn on virulence genes at low-cell-density (eg. V. cholerae) and pathogens that turn on virulence genes at high-cell-density (eg. P. aeruginosa).



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