# Announcing the mSystems special collection on microbial dormancy

Ashley Shade

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## To cite this version:

Ashley Shade. Announcing the mSystems special collection on microbial dormancy. mSystems, 2024, 9, 10.1128/msystems.01005-24. hal-05381504

HAL Id: hal-05381504

https://hal.science/hal-05381504v1

Submitted on 25 Nov 2025

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Title

Announcing the *mSystems* special collection on microbial dormancy

Author

Ashley Shade, senior editor, mSystems

Shade.ashley@gmail.com

Main text

Many microorganisms can persist in a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity called dormancy. Dormancy allows microbes to survive unfavorable conditions, disperse and immigrate widely, broaden community diversity, extend lifespan, and preserve genetic information for future generations. Yet, there remain critical and fundamental unknowns about dormancy and its implications for microbial systems biology.

mSystems welcomes original Research Articles, Methods and Protocols, Opinions/Hypothesis or Perspective articles that address advances in our understanding of microbial dormancy and its consequences for population or community ecology, evolution, microbe-microbe or host-microbial interactions, and system metabolism or cellular processes. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

1. Persister cells and antimicrobial, metal, or other abiotic or biotic control of microbial activity switching

2. Viable but non-cultivable phenotypes, their drivers, and their consequences for cellular systems, community ecology, or population fitness

3. New methods for discriminating activity states among microbial cells, including laboratory and computational/bioinformatic tools.

4. Assessment of microbial activity (e.g., using SIP, BONCAT, flow cytometry, 16S rRNA ratios, etc.) and to inform understanding of patterns of biodiversity, ecology, or evolution

5. Phylogenetic insights into the distributions and diversification of dormancy strategies

6. Implications of microbial dormancy for microbe-microbe or microbe-host interactions (including competition, synergisms, symbioses, or microbiome outcomes)

7. Dormancy-driven alterations in cellular, population, or microbiome primary or secondary metabolism, metabolic networks, or regulation

8. Development of theory, conceptual frameworks, or mathematical models for understanding dormancy or activity state switching or predicting dormant states.
9. Discovery of new biological signatures of dormant states

Articles belonging to the special collection will be published as they are accepted, and we especially welcome the application of multidisciplinary and innovative approaches to understanding the drivers and consequences of dormancy in microbial systems.

This special collection is catalyzed in parallel to the *mSystems Thinking Series* webinars on dormancy: 17 September 2024 and 07 November 2024.