The sleeping bacterium: shedding light on the resuscitation mechanism

TL;DR

This paper models bacterial revival mechanisms using a grid-based information diffusion approach, analyzing how environmental changes and bacterial interactions facilitate dormancy exit.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model simulating bacterial quorum sensing and phenotypic cooperation to understand revival conditions.

Findings

Revival is triggered by environmental changes.

Phenotypic cooperation influences revival likelihood.

Catalyst bacteria produce resources aiding revival.

Abstract

The revival mechanism in dormant bacteria is a puzzling and open issue. We propose a model of information diffusion on a regular grid where agents represent bacteria and their mutual interactions implement quorum sensing. Agents may have different metabolic characteristics corresponding to multiple phenotypes. The intra/inter phenotype cooperation is analyzed under different metabolic and productivity conditions. We study the interactions between rapidly reproducing active bacteria and non-reproducing quiescent bacteria. We highlight the conditions under which the quiescent bacteria may revive. The occurrence of revival is generally related to a change in environmental conditions. Our results support this picture showing that revival can be mediated by the presence of different catalyst bacteria that produce the necessary resources .