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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)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Mark D McDonald, Carlos Owusu-Ansah, Jared B Ellenbogen, Zachary D Malone, Michael P Ricketts, Steve E Frolking, Jessica Gilman Ernakovich, Michael Ibba, Sarah C Bagby, JL Weissman. (2023) What is microbial dormancy? Trends in Microbiology https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2023.08.006
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