Surviving through a dry spell: microbial responses to drying and rewetting

The issues of how microorganisms survive very long periods of desiccation and how they react during both drying and rehydration phases have long been topics of interest in a range of relevant fields, including desert ecosystem microbiomics, food storage, ancient microbe studies, and even astrobiology. The recently published study by Carini et al., who used a combination of transcriptomics and metabolomics to investigate steady-state gene expression and cellular metabolite profiles at different states of bacterial cellular desiccation, during both drying and rewetting phases, adds some valuable insights into how members of bacterial communities can survive in the driest habitats on earth (P. Carini, A. Gomez-Buckley, C. R. Guerrero, M. R. Kridler, et al., mSystems 11:e00493-25, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1128/msystems.00493-25).