Small RNAs and bacterial strains involved in quorum sensing

Vibrio harveyi Vibrio cholerae Vibrio V. harveyi Quorum-sensing bacteria communicate with extracellular signal molecules called autoinducers to allow community-wide synchronization of gene expression. The present invention relates to the identification the and protein Hfq as mediating interactions between small, regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) and specific messenger RNA (mRNA) targets. Accordingly, the present invention provides nucleic acids encoding the sRNAs, strains having various deletions and mutations of one or more qrr genes encoding these sRNA as well as methods of identifying quorum-sensing regulators. Additionally, the invention relates to an isolated Hfq protein and conservative amino acid substitutions thereof as well as nucleic acids encoding those proteins, recombinant methods of producing those proteins and antibodies against those proteins.