chemocommunication between bacteria and higher vertebrate animals

Springerlink | For the last few years, convincing evidence has been obtained in favor of that hormones and other signal molecules of the higher vertebrates are able to control fundamental processes in bacterial cells. Moreover, in bacteria, there are revealed and characterized the chemosignal systems able with high selectivity to recognize and transform the signals from vertebrates as well as the effector systems responsible for the final response of the bacterial cell to these signals. In turn, some bacterial signal molecules can affect functional activity of signal systems in cells of the higher vertebrates and control the signaling cascades responsible for apoptosis and other vital processes.

Thus, between prokaryotes and the higher vertebrates—the living organisms that are on diametrically opposite poles of evolutionary development—there are tight chemocommunicational connections, and in many aspects they are beyond the “guest–host” relations.

Analysis of the signal molecules and their triggered signaling cascades underlying such connections is the topic of the present review.