Paulette Sofia Romero-Perez

Keywords Humans, Dehydration, Desiccation, Adaptation, Physiological, Biophysics Abstract The molecular machinery that enables life has evolved in water, yet many of the organisms around us are able to survive even extreme desiccation. Especially remarkable are single-cell and sedentary organisms that rely on specialized biomolecular machinery to survive in environments that are routinely subjected to a near-complete lack of water.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Supporting Information Filename Description pro5192-sup-0001-Supinfo.docxWord 2007 document , 2.7 MB Data S1. Supporting Information. REFERENCES Anon. Retraction: an enhanced transient expression system in plants based on suppression of gene silencing by the p19 protein of tomato bushy stunt virus. Plant J. 2015; 84:846. . A language and environment for statistical computing.

Abstract Cellular desiccation - the loss of nearly all water from the cell - is a recurring stress in an increasing number of ecosystems that can drive protein unfolding and aggregation. For cells to survive, at least some of the proteome must resume function upon rehydration. Which proteins tolerate desiccation, and the molecular determinants that underlie this tolerance, are largely unknown.