Intermittent Sterilisation

Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Data Availability Statement The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions. References , , and . 2003. “Senescence in a Bacterium With Asymmetric Division.” Science 300, no. 5627: 1920–1920. , , , et al. 2012.

Persister cells (persisters) are a small fraction of a bacterial population that survive otherwise lethal doses of antibiotics by staying at a state of slow or no growth. While these cells remain in the state of persistence, they cannot be killed by conventional antibiotics, unless the cells phenotypically switch to the normal cell state and become susceptible to antibiotics again (Balaban et al., 2004).