https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2023.08.006">
 

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Life can be stressful. One way to deal with stress is to simply wait it out. Microbes do this by entering a state of reduced activity and increased resistance commonly called ‘dormancy’. But what is dormancy? Different scientific disciplines emphasize distinct traits and phenotypic ranges in defining dormancy for their microbial species and system-specific questions of interest. Here, we propose a unified definition of microbial dormancy, using a broad framework to place earlier discipline-specific definitions in a new context. We then discuss how this new definition and framework may improve our ability to investigate dormancy using multi-omics tools. Finally, we leverage our framework to discuss the diversity of genomic mechanisms for dormancy in an extreme environment that challenges easy definitions – the permafrost.

Department

Soil Biogeochemistry and Microbial Ecology

Publication Date

9-7-2023

Journal Title

Trends in Microbiology

Publisher

CellPress

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2023.08.006

Document Type

Article

Rights

© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Comments

This is an Open Access article published by CellPress in Trends in Microbiology in 2023, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2023.08.006

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