It is challenging to study how pneumococci control virulence factor expression, because cues of natural environments and the presence of an immune system are difficult to simulate in vitro

not suitable for process control in wastewater treatment and the real-time monitoring of water environments, such as rivers, streams, ponds, and ground water

For in situ studies of AHL-dependent signaling in complex habitats, biosensors utilizing fluorescent proteins (GFP and RFP) as reporter genes have been developed

biosensors were employed to demonstrate AHL-mediated communication in swarm colonies of Serratia liquefaciens

it may be possible to tag specific organisms and use these as monitor systems to estimate local chemical composition directly in the biofilms

Such biosensors can reveal intriguing aspects of the environment and the physiology of the free-living soil S. meliloti before and during the establishment of nodulation, and they provide a nondestructive, spatially explicit method for examining rhizosphere soil chemical composition