Persister cells
dormant, persistent state of a bacterial population
Persister cells are subpopulations of cells that survive under lethal treatment, by being antimicrobial tolerant for example by entering a state of dormancy or quiescence. Persister cells in their dormancy do not divide. The tolerance shown in persister cells differs from antimicrobial resistance in that the survival is not due to a higher minimum inhibitory concentration(MIC). It is typically is not inherited and is reversible. When treatment has stopped the state of dormancy can be reversed and the cells can reactivate and multiply. Most studies of persister cells were done in bacteria, but there are also fungal persister cells, yeast persister cells, and cancer persister cells that show tolerance for cancer drugs.
History
Recognition of bacterial persister cells dates back to 1944 when Joseph Warwick Bigger, an Irish physician working in England, was experimenting with the recently discovered penicillin. Bigger used penicillin to lyse a suspension of bacteria and then inoculate a culture medium with the penicillin-treated liquid. Colonies of bacteria were able to grow after antibiotic exposure. The important observation that Bigger made was that this new population could again be almost eliminated by the use of penicillin except for a small residual population.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Persister cells” as dormant, persistent state of a bacterial population. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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This entry incorporates text from “Persister cells” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.