Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of the main models to study social behaviors in bacteria since it synthesizes several exoproducts, including exoproteases and siderophores and release them to the environment. Exoproteases and siderophores are public goods that can be utilized by the individuals that produce them but also by non-producers, that are considered social cheaters. Molecularly exoprotease cheaters are mutants in regulatory genes such as lasR, and are commonly isolated from chronic infections and selected in the laboratory upon serial cultivation in media with protein as a sole carbon source. Despite that the production of exoproteases is exploitable, cooperators have also ways to restrict the growth and selection of social cheaters, for instance by producing toxic metabolites like pyocyanin. In this work, using bacterial competitions, serial cultivation, and growth assays, we demonstrated that rhamnolipids which production is regulated by quorum sensing, selectively affect the growth of lasR mutants and are able to restrict social cheating, hence contributing to the maintenance of cooperation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa populations.

中文翻译：

---

鼠李糖脂稳定铜绿假单胞菌中群体感应介导的合作。

铜绿假单胞菌是研究细菌社会行为的主要模型之一，因为它合成了几种外生产物，包括外切蛋白酶和铁载体，并释放到环境中。外蛋白酶和铁载体是公共产品，既可以由生产它们的个人使用，也可以由非生产者使用，被认为是社会骗子。分子外蛋白酶作弊者是调控基因（如lasR）中的突变体，通常从慢性感染中分离出来，并在以蛋白质为唯一碳源的培养基中进行系列培养后在实验室中进行选择。尽管外蛋白酶的生产是可利用的，但是合作者也有方法限制社交骗子的生长和选择，例如通过产生有毒代谢产物如花青素。在这项工作中，利用细菌竞争，