Quorum sensing N-acyl homoserine lactones-SdiA enhances the biofilm formation of E. coli by regulating sRNA CsrB expression.

As an important virulence phenotype of Escherichia coli, the regulation mechanism of biofilm by non-coding RNA and quorum sensing system has not been clarified. Here, by transcriptome sequencing and RT-PCR analysis, we found CsrB, a non-coding RNA of the carbon storage regulation system, was positively regulated by the LuxR protein SdiA. Furthermore, ß-galactosidase reporter assays showed that SdiA enhanced promoter transcriptional activity of csrB. The consistent dynamic expression levels of SdiA and CsrB during Escherichia coli growth were also detected. Moreover, curli assays and biofilm assays showed sdiA deficiency in Escherichia coli SM10λπ or BW25113 led to a decreased formation of biofilm, and was significantly restored by over-expression of CsrB. Interestingly, the regulations of SdiA on CsrB in biofilm formation were enhanced by quorum sensing signal molecules AHLs. In conclusion, SdiA plays a crucial role in Escherichia coli biofilm formation by regulating the expression of non-coding RNA CsrB. Our study provides new insights into SdiA-non-coding RNA regulatory network involved in Escherichia coli biofilm formation.

Nonequilibrium Dynamics of Deconfined Quantum Critical Point in Imaginary Time.

Deconfined quantum critical point (DQCP) characterizes a kind of exotic phase transition beyond the usual Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm. Here we study the nonequilibrium imaginary-time dynamics of the DQCP in the two-dimensional J-Q_{3} model. We explicitly show the deconfinement dynamic process and identify that it is the spinon confinement length, rather than the usual correlation length, that increases proportionally to the time. Moreover, we find that, in the relaxation process, the order parameters of the Néel and the valence-bond-solid orders can be controlled by different length scales, although they satisfy the same equilibrium scaling forms. A dual dynamic scaling theory is then proposed. Our findings not only constitute a new realm of nonequilibrium criticality in DQCP, but also offer a controllable knob by which to investigate the dynamics in strongly correlated systems. Possible realizations in foreseeable quantum computers are also discussed.