strain HS-18 was grown in LB broth
supplemented with 50 mM MOPS in the presence or absence of 0.1 mM
AHL at 30 °C with shaking at 200 rpm. Aliquots of cell cultures
were taken at 3, 6, and 9 h after inoculation, respectively, and the
cell pellets collected by centrifugation were used for purification
of total RNA with the Ribopure RNA extraction kit according to the
manufacturer’s protocol (Ambion, Life Technologies); 400 ng
of total RNA samples were taken to generate the cDNA samples using
the EasyScript one-step genomic DNA (gDNA) removal and cDNA synthesis
SuperMix kit according to the manufacturer’s protocol (TransGen,
Beijing, China). Quantitative RT-PCR (RT-qPCR) analyses of the aig genes were performed using a QuantStudio 6 flex system
with the primer pairs listed in
protocol (Tiangen Biotech). The constitutively expressed rpoD gene was used as the reference to standardize all the samples. At
least three biological replicates were used for each sample, and the
experiments were conducted at least twice.