Quorum sensing inhibitors (QSIs) are a promising alternative to the antibiotics and unlikely to induce drug resistance. However, toxicity studies on the QSIs remain limited; therefore in this paper we investigated the acute (15 min) and chronic (24 h) toxicity of some potential QSIs on both gram-negative (V. fischeri) and gram-positive bacteria (B. subtilis). It was found that the toxicity of the QSIs differed with the toxicity test periods. QSAR models were developed for both the acute and chronic toxicity, using the interaction energies between QSIs and the relevant proteins, and the frontier orbital energies. Based on the QSAR models, it was suggested that QSIs primarily bind with the luciferase at 15 min, but LuxR at 24 h in V. fischeri; whereas in B. subtilis, the QSIs mainly bind with LuxS. Our study provided an insight into the toxicity mechanism for QSIs during different exposure periods.
Keywords: Bacteria; Environmental risk assessment; QSAR; Quorum sensing inhibitors; Toxicity.