Plant food extracts and phytochemicals: Their role as Quorum Sensing Inhibitors

Abstract

Traditionally, plant food extracts and phytochemical compounds have been used as remedies against microbial infections with the added benefit that most of them are safe for human consumption. These compounds have been also highlighted as Quorum Sensing Inhibitors (QSI). Quorum Sensing (QS) is a regulatory mechanism that enables bacteria to make collective decisions with respect to the expression of a specific set of genes which can be related to virulence factors. Among all the available studies, most of them use biosensor to demonstrate the role of plant foods and phytochemicals as QSI and only few of these studies focus on their mechanisms of action. This review summarizes the published scientific work on the use of plant food extracts and phytochemicals as QSI, highlighting the techniques used to identify their biological activity and their mechanisms of action.