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Individuality, phenotypic differentiation, dormancy and ‘persistence’ in culturable bacterial systems: commonalities shared by environmental, laboratory, and clinical microbiology

For bacteria, replication mainly involves growth by binary fission. However, in a very great many natural environments there are examples of phenotypically dormant, non-growing cells that do not replicate immediately and that are phenotypically ‘nonculturable’ on media that normally admit their grow...

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Autores principales: Kell, Douglas, Potgieter, Marnie, Pretorius, Etheresia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: F1000Research 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4642849/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26629334
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.6709.2
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author Kell, Douglas
Potgieter, Marnie
Pretorius, Etheresia
author_facet Kell, Douglas
Potgieter, Marnie
Pretorius, Etheresia
author_sort Kell, Douglas
collection PubMed
description For bacteria, replication mainly involves growth by binary fission. However, in a very great many natural environments there are examples of phenotypically dormant, non-growing cells that do not replicate immediately and that are phenotypically ‘nonculturable’ on media that normally admit their growth. They thereby evade detection by conventional culture-based methods. Such dormant cells may also be observed in laboratory cultures and in clinical microbiology. They are usually more tolerant to stresses such as antibiotics, and in clinical microbiology they are typically referred to as ‘persisters’. Bacterial cultures necessarily share a great deal of relatedness, and inclusive fitness theory implies that there are conceptual evolutionary advantages in trading a variation in growth rate against its mean, equivalent to hedging one’s bets. There is much evidence that bacteria exploit this strategy widely. We here bring together data that show the commonality of these phenomena across environmental, laboratory and clinical microbiology. Considerable evidence, using methods similar to those common in environmental microbiology, now suggests that many supposedly non-communicable, chronic and inflammatory diseases are exacerbated (if not indeed largely caused) by the presence of dormant or persistent bacteria (the ability of whose components to cause inflammation is well known). This dormancy (and resuscitation therefrom) often reflects the extent of the availability of free iron. Together, these phenomena can provide a ready explanation for the continuing inflammation common to such chronic diseases and its correlation with iron dysregulation. This implies that measures designed to assess and to inhibit or remove such organisms (or their access to iron) might be of much therapeutic benefit.
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spelling pubmed-46428492015-11-30 Individuality, phenotypic differentiation, dormancy and ‘persistence’ in culturable bacterial systems: commonalities shared by environmental, laboratory, and clinical microbiology Kell, Douglas Potgieter, Marnie Pretorius, Etheresia F1000Res Review For bacteria, replication mainly involves growth by binary fission. However, in a very great many natural environments there are examples of phenotypically dormant, non-growing cells that do not replicate immediately and that are phenotypically ‘nonculturable’ on media that normally admit their growth. They thereby evade detection by conventional culture-based methods. Such dormant cells may also be observed in laboratory cultures and in clinical microbiology. They are usually more tolerant to stresses such as antibiotics, and in clinical microbiology they are typically referred to as ‘persisters’. Bacterial cultures necessarily share a great deal of relatedness, and inclusive fitness theory implies that there are conceptual evolutionary advantages in trading a variation in growth rate against its mean, equivalent to hedging one’s bets. There is much evidence that bacteria exploit this strategy widely. We here bring together data that show the commonality of these phenomena across environmental, laboratory and clinical microbiology. Considerable evidence, using methods similar to those common in environmental microbiology, now suggests that many supposedly non-communicable, chronic and inflammatory diseases are exacerbated (if not indeed largely caused) by the presence of dormant or persistent bacteria (the ability of whose components to cause inflammation is well known). This dormancy (and resuscitation therefrom) often reflects the extent of the availability of free iron. Together, these phenomena can provide a ready explanation for the continuing inflammation common to such chronic diseases and its correlation with iron dysregulation. This implies that measures designed to assess and to inhibit or remove such organisms (or their access to iron) might be of much therapeutic benefit. F1000Research 2015-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4642849/ /pubmed/26629334 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.6709.2 Text en Copyright: © 2015 Kell D et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Review
Kell, Douglas
Potgieter, Marnie
Pretorius, Etheresia
Individuality, phenotypic differentiation, dormancy and ‘persistence’ in culturable bacterial systems: commonalities shared by environmental, laboratory, and clinical microbiology
title Individuality, phenotypic differentiation, dormancy and ‘persistence’ in culturable bacterial systems: commonalities shared by environmental, laboratory, and clinical microbiology
title_full Individuality, phenotypic differentiation, dormancy and ‘persistence’ in culturable bacterial systems: commonalities shared by environmental, laboratory, and clinical microbiology
title_fullStr Individuality, phenotypic differentiation, dormancy and ‘persistence’ in culturable bacterial systems: commonalities shared by environmental, laboratory, and clinical microbiology
title_full_unstemmed Individuality, phenotypic differentiation, dormancy and ‘persistence’ in culturable bacterial systems: commonalities shared by environmental, laboratory, and clinical microbiology
title_short Individuality, phenotypic differentiation, dormancy and ‘persistence’ in culturable bacterial systems: commonalities shared by environmental, laboratory, and clinical microbiology
title_sort individuality, phenotypic differentiation, dormancy and ‘persistence’ in culturable bacterial systems: commonalities shared by environmental, laboratory, and clinical microbiology
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4642849/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26629334
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.6709.2
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