Discovery of a widespread chemical signaling pathway in the phylum Bacteroidota

We report a Bacteroidetes-specific chemical signaling system using as model organism Tenacibaculum discolor sv11. This system is constituted of the diffusible autoinducer N-acyl cyclolysine (ACLs) and the transcriptional regulator aclR, which regulates the production of various secreted molecules in a signal concentration-dependent fashion.