Investigating the physiology of viable but non-culturable bacteria by microfluidics and time-lapse microscopy.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Clonal microbial populations often harbor rare phenotypic variants that are typically hidden within the majority of the remaining cells, but are crucial for the population's resilience to external perturbations. Persister and viable but non-culturable (VBNC) cells are two important clonal bacterial subpopulations that can survive antibiotic treatment. Both persister and VBNC cells pose a serious threat to human health. However, unlike persister cells, which quickly resume growth following drug removal, VBNC cells can remain non-growing for prolonged periods of time, thus eluding detection via traditional microbiological assays. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the formation of VBNC cells requires the characterization of the clonal population with sing

SUBMITTER: Bamford RA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5738893 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature