The sleeping bacterium: shedding light on the resuscitation mechanism

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 .