In the field of food technology, there is an increasing effort to explore preventive measures to prevent the appearance of food spoilage and infections caused by the transmission of pathogenic bacteria through food. Due to the microbial cell-to-cell communication, which supposed to play an important role in aforementioned processes, it seeks in the research practice to discover the appropriate way of its inhibition. In addition to explaining the basic principles of the quorum sensing mechanism in Gram negative bacteria, the purpose of the review is also to address the published literature on potential plant compounds as quorum sensing inhibitors. They must not be harmful to human health, but they need to have an impact on the quorum dependent population density and its regulated phenotype properties that are key for bacterial survival in the food chain. The problem is limited to the more important pathogenic food-borne bacteria and it refers to plant inhibitors that are often mentioned in the literature as groups of quorum-quenching plants such as for example fruits and vegetables, spices, medicinal plants and/or their essential oils, extracts as well as certain individual plant components.
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