Mathematical modelling of the agr operon in Staphylococcus aureus
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BiBTeXStaphylococcus aureus is a pathogenic bacterium that utilises quorum sensing (QS), a cell-to-cell signalling mechanism, to enhance its ability to cause disease. QS allows the bacteria to monitor their surroundings and the size of their population, and S. aureus makes use of this to regulate the production of virulence factors. Here we describe a mathematical model of this QS system and perform a detailed time-dependent asymptotic analysis in order to clarify the roles of the distinct interactions that make up the QS process, demonstrating which reactions dominate the behaviour of the system at various timepoints. We couple this analysis with numerical simulations and are thus able to gain insight into how a large population of S. aureus shifts from a relatively harmless state to a highly virulent one, focussing on the need for the three distinct phases which form the feedback loop of this particular QS system.
SEEK ID: https://fairdomhub.org/publications/35
PubMed ID: 19688348
Projects: COSMIC
Publication type: Not specified
Journal: J Math Biol
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Date Published: 19th Feb 2009
Registered Mode: Not specified
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Created: 1st Jun 2010 at 13:12
Last updated: 8th Dec 2022 at 17:25
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Projects: COSMIC
Institutions: University of Nottingham
I am a Birmingham and MRC Fellow in mathematical biology. Specialising in the modelling of gene regulation networks using both numerical and analytical approaches, my work spans a range of biological applications, from drug development to bioenergy to understanding bacterial behaviour. My MRC fellowship gave me the opportunity to gain experimental training in order to generate the complementary data required to adopt a truly interdisciplinary approach to mathematical modelling in biology.
I worked ...
Projects: COSMIC
Institutions: University of Nottingham
I am a mathematical modeller concerned primarily with applications in biology,
SysMO is a European transnational funding and research initiative on "Systems Biology of Microorganisms".
The goal pursued by SysMO was to record and describe the dynamic molecular processes going on in unicellular microorganisms in a comprehensive way and to present these processes in the form of computerized mathematical models.
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Quorum sensing(QS) allows the bacteria to monitor their surroundings and the size of their population. Staphylococcus aureus makes use of QS to regulate the production of virulence factors. This mathematical model of the QS system in S aureus was presented and analyzed (Journal of Mathematical Biology(2010) 61:17–54) in order to clarify the roles of the distinct interactions that make up the QS process, demonstrating which reactions dominate the behaviour of the system at various timepoints. ...
Creators: Sara Jabbari, John King, Adrian Koerber, Paul Williams
Submitter: Franco du Preez
Model type: Ordinary differential equations (ODE)
Model format: Not specified
Environment: JWS Online
