The physiology of growth arrest: uniting molecular and environmental microbiology
Abstract
Most bacteria spend the majority of their time in prolonged states of very low metabolic activity and little or no growth, in which electron donors, electron acceptors and/or nutrients are limited, but cells are poised to undergo rapid division cycles when resources become available. These non-growing states are far less studied than other growth states, which leaves many questions regarding basic bacterial physiology unanswered. In this Review, we discuss findings from a small but diverse set of systems that have been used to investigate how growth-arrested bacteria adjust metabolism, regulate transcription and translation, and maintain their chromosomes. We highlight major questions that remain to be addressed, and suggest that progress in answering them will be aided by recent methodological advances and by dialectic between environmental and molecular microbiology perspectives.
Additional Information
© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Published online 11 August 2016. The authors dedicate this review to R. Kolter, on the occasion of his upcoming retirement. Whether in his pursuit of meaningful bacterial or human lifestyles, he has been ahead of the curve his entire career. The authors thank him for inspiration, and thank members in the laboratory of D.K.N, S. Finkel and P. Esra for helpful feedback on this manuscript. D.K.N. is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The authors thank the HHMI and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH; grant 5R01HL117328-03) for supporting their studies of non-growing states. The authors declare no competing interests.Attached Files
Accepted Version - nihms-1882490.pdf
Supplemental Material - nrmicro_2016_107-f1.jpg
Supplemental Material - nrmicro_2016_107-f2.jpg
Supplemental Material - nrmicro_2016_107-f3.jpg
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC10069271
- Eprint ID
- 69585
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20160812-091235598
- URL
- https://rdcu.be/dui28
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
- NIH
- 5R01HL117328-03
- Created
-
2016-08-12Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2023-05-18Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, Division of Biology and Biological Engineering