Improved quorum sensing capacity by culturing Vibrio harveyi in microcapsules

• Quorum sensing of microencapsulated Vibrio harveyi has been demonstrated.
• ELDCwc method promotes cells to grow into aggregation structure.
• Improved quorum sensing capacity has been proved with encapsulated cell aggregates.

Microcapsule entrapped low density cells with culture (ELDCwc), different from free cell culture, conferred stronger stress resistance and improved cell viability of microorganisms. In this paper, the quorum sensing (QS) system of Vibrio harveyi was used to investigate changes when cells were cultured in microcapsules. Cells in ELDCwc group grew into cell aggregates, which facilitated cell–cell communication and led to increased bioluminescence intensity. Moreover, the luxS-AI-2 system, a well-studied QS signal pathway, was detected as both luxS gene and the AI-2 signaling molecule, and the results were analyzed with respect to QS capacity of unit cell. The V. harveyi of ELDCwc also showed higher relative gene expression and stronger quorum sensing capacity when compared with free cells. In conclusion, the confined microcapsule space can promote the cell aggregates formation, reduce cell–cell communication distance and increase local concentration of signal molecule, which are beneficial to bacterial QS.