Within recent years, there has been an increasing
interest in discovering the beneficial effects of probiotics
and the mechanisms by which probiotics interact with
the host and the gut microbiota. One of the
mechanisms that bacteria interact or communicate with
each other is quorum sensing. Quorum sensing is cellto-
cell signalling through the production, secretion and
detection of small signal molecules called autoinducers.
The aim of the present study was to investigate the
transcription of the luxS gene involved in quorum
sensing in probiotic strain Lactobacillus acidophilus
NCFM after passage through an in vitro digestion
model, which could have effect on cell-to-cell
communication between microorganisms of gut
microbiota.