Many bacteria can infect and persist inside their hosts for long periods of time. This can be
due to immunosuppression of the host, immune evasion by the pathogen and/or ineffective …

BACKGROUND The escalating crisis of multidrug resistance is raising fears of untreatable
infections caused by bacterial “superbugs.” However, many patients already suffer from …

Retrons are prokaryotic genetic retroelements encoding a reverse transcriptase that
produces multi-copy single-stranded DNA (msDNA). Despite decades of research on the …

Type II toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are small genetic elements composed of a toxic protein
and its cognate antitoxin protein, the latter counteracting the toxicity of the former. While TA …

Bacterial persister cells constitute a subpopulation of genetically identical, metabolically
slow-growing cells that are highly tolerant of antibiotics and other environmental stresses …

Persisters are transiently tolerant variants that allow populations to avoid eradication by
antibiotic treatment. Their antibiotic tolerance is non-genetic, not inheritable and results from …

Evolution is the hallmark of life. Descriptions of the evolution of microorganisms have
provided a wealth of information, but knowledge regarding “what happened” has precluded …

Bacteria have evolved numerous means of survival in adverse environments with dormancy,
as represented by “persistence” and the “viable but nonculturable”(VBNC) state, now …

Persistence is a reversible and low-frequency phenomenon allowing a subpopulation of a
clonal bacterial population to survive antibiotic treatments. Upon removal of the antibiotic …

Bacterial persisters are phenotypic variants that survive antibiotic treatment in a dormant
state and can be formed by multiple pathways. We recently proposed that the second …