Tel Aviv, Jan. 4 -- A new Israeli study is challenging one of the most entrenched assumptions in microbiology: that bacteria survive antibiotics primarily by going dormant. The research shows that antibiotic persistence is not a single biological phenomenon, but instead arises from two fundamentally different growth-arrest states, a discovery that helps resolve years of contradictory findings and opens new paths for preventing recurring infections.

Antibiotics are designed to eliminate bacteria by disrupting processes tied to growth and division. Yet in many infections, a small subset of bacterial cells survives treatment and later reignites disease. This phenomenon, known as antibiotic persistence, is a major cause of treatment failure ...